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PURCHASED BY THE HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND. 





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Applegarth, Margaret IT. 184 
-1976. 


A china shepherdess 








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A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS | 


‘By / 
MARGARET T. Ngee 





PHILADELPHIA 
THE JUDSON PRESS 
BOSTON CHICAGO LOS ANGELES 


KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 


Copyright, 1924, by 
THE JUDSON PRESS 





Published June, 1924 


PrinTeED In U.S.A. 


Sometimes people write books and other peo- 
ple do not know how to use them. Thats always 
such a pity! For there is so much more to do 
with a book than just to read it and then put it 
away on a shelf. Had you thought that perhaps 
somebody else would like to hear about it on spe- 
cial occasions in your church and Sunday school? 

You will see that the China Shepherdess has 
given you some hints about when her stories can 
be told, and the drawings in each chapter will 
give still other hints! 








HAND-DECORATED CHINA 


Once upon a time there was a Committee Meeting. 
Among those present were: Mr. Glue Pot, presiding; 
Mr. Ink Bottle, Miss Scissors, Mrs. Pencil, Miss Pen, and 
various connections of the Paper Family—such as little 
Pasteboard Pieces and their cousin Colored Cardboard, 
also the Box Brothers, and Miss Book. 


Said Chairman Glue Pot (unsealing his lips), “ Will the 
meeting please come to order. Ladies and gentlemen, 
we are met to listen to a report from Miss Book.” 


Said Miss Book (opening her jacket and turning her 
leaves): “ Dear friends, as you know, I am about to 
tour the country to tell the adventures of a certain 
China Shepherdess to young people, to boys and girls, 
to leaders and to teachers. It seems to me it would 
be the greatest help if these various readers, in home 
or school, could have object lessons to make China 
seem more real to them: hand-decorated China, as it 
were.” 


Said Mr. Ink Bottle (politely raising his lid), “ Madam, 
as we stand on the brINK of sending you out into the 
world, I shrINK from being the first to speak, yet 1 
herewith gladly shed every drop of my life’s blood to 
help your various Chinese dolls to prINK and wINK 
and blIINK.” 


Said Miss Pen, “ And I can thINK of no higher task 
than to sINK myself in that spilled INK and—make 
faces!” 


Said Miss Scissors (cuttingly), “ There are those who 
call me a great cut-up, but I hereby promise to cut 
out all houses, pagodas, Blue Belles, buffaloes, dragons, 
pedlers, and wheelbarrows.” 


Said Mr. Glue Pot (with sticky devotion), “ And I hope 
I’m not too stuck-up to join together what you have 
put asunder! ” 


Said the Box Brothers (with hollow pathos), “ Our lives 
have been so empty lately that if you can use any 
of us, thin or fat, we shall be filled with gratitude.” 


Said the Paper Family in a chorus, ‘‘ You cover us with 
confusion! For what good is ink, or glue, or scissors, 


or boxes, if somebody doesn’t move that we be laid on 
the table?” 


And instantly everybody “ moved”: moved right on top 
of the paper, with the following results in hand-deco- 
rated China— 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


JOE NTER THE GHINA TOHEPHERDESS ooo. Po eke % 
(A trip, a talk, and a few other things.) 


II]. BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED*...... 15 


(Suppose you spent the night in another 
girl’s shoes!) 


Pilea VL iss VLARCO<FOLO DISCOVERS CHINA so... . 39 
(It is never too late to go exploring with 
her. ) 
TV. OpeninGc CHINA WITH A LANCET..........6.- 53 


(You will like Dr. Peter Parker.) 


MTA NNS@A CROSS THE SEA 100s vrs gc be Po eee ewe 65 


(Both Dr. Eleanor Chestnut’s hands and 
your own, too.) 


VI. Prrate Piz AND THE-BoAT-WItTH-AN-EYE .... 75 
(Not a la mode, even in China.) 


Ree OLEN. WANT “A CRACKER 2 oiiccoc hci a dp ewlicne « 91 


(Can you speak Chinese?) 


* The author gratefully acknowledges permission to adapt the two starred 
stories which appeared originally in ‘‘ Everyland.” 


CHAPTER 


WALT: 


IX. 


oO 


XIT. 


XITT. 


XIV. 


XV. 





CONTENTS 


THE (BEST SELLERGINGA GELUARY eee 
(Here is a Thanksgiving story.) 


‘TEN: [INKLING BLUE BELLES? 3 snes 
(When school opened in China.) 


. THE STAR THAT WaAs STOLEN BY THE THREE 


UN-wIsE MEN oF THE EAST*........... 
(This sounds like Christmas, doesn’t it ?) 


THE LostT-ANpD-FoUND FRONT Door ........ 


(But you will have to be told that this is 
a New Year’s Story.) 


THE HEArT oF BuFFALO BILL Was FIvE- 
JACKETS ‘COLD: 3.2 Ae RE eee 


(Surely there’s a Valentine here!) 


WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF Mr. Si AND THE 
Empress’ S1-Einc-CHl. o..2. eee 


(Silk week comes in February, you 
know.) 


THE Pic THAT WAS A VACUUM-CLEANER ... 
(Pigs and March 17th belong together.) 


A New St. Georce But A Very OLp DRAGON 


(What happened when things were left 
to George.) 


137 


151 


167 


179 


191 


203 


CHAPTER 


ZONES 


Dey IT. 
XVIII. 


XIX. 


XX. 
XXI. 


XXII. 


CONTENTS 


ANWFALOONS CUT OFTHE SK Y2 se cute eee 217 


(This of course sounds exactly like 
“April Fool” !) 


GRANNY’s CoFFIN Was VERY RED ........ Pao 
(But Easter took away the dread of it.) 


Tue MortTuer or A Mau Jonc Cry-BaBy .. 247 
(Mother's Day is every day in China, too. ) 


Goopy-Two-SuHors Got A MotrHer-1n-Law 263 


(‘Here Comes the Bride!” Weddings 
are quite different in China. ) 


PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN .. 283 
(When “ fly-time ” came to China.) 


PE ERUSTT ATR ONGTELE? LKOOF Gs ceivels a cits © «'s 299 
(This may remind you of Hallowe’en.) 


ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD .........-- agai 


(He wanted to “light” China; and he 
did!) 


a 


S beau fi } 


i are 


oe 








If you are going to tell the stories in this book to somebody 
else, then it will be really a great deal of fun to make the various 
houses and characters suggested in the drawings; that is one 
reason why the lines have been made so awkwardly simple, 
so that you will not be afraid to try copying them yourself. 
(The other reason, alas, is that I really can’t draw any better!) 

Cynthia’s Dresden China Shepherdess was made of very brittle 
bisque, no doubt; but you can make a charming little shepherdess 
of your own by dressing a small doll like this Miss Bo-Peep; or 
you can draw one on cardboard and cut it out. 


moi rite ett 
LATO AL Ih oS A 


“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” 
“The sea is not worn by ships, nor is a road ruined by travel.” 


“Good words are like a string of pearls.” 


I 
ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


CyNTHIA is really very nice, and you are going 
to like her immensely before you get through 
with this book, I hope. It is possible that we 
ought to be calling her Miss Drummond so that 
you can fully realize that when this story opened 
she was a young lady in long skirts (but not too 
long, of course) with her hair done up in a lovely 
_ knot at the nape of her neck. Also—in case you 
ever need to remember it—she had graduated 
from college with high honors. But in spite of 
skirts and knots and honors somehow you can- 
not call Cynthia “ Miss Drummond ”’; the minute 
you do, she stops being Cynthia! Half the gold 
stops sparkling in her hair, half the violet color 
drops from her violet-gray eyes at the very first 
syllable “ Drum ”” Oh, much-too-heavy a 
name, when Cynthia herself is light like the wind 
and the waves and the dear spring flowers and 
the saucy spring breezes. 

Now it happened on the day when Cynthia was 
starting on a trip around the world that she was 


[3] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


packing her trunks and trying her best to squeeze 
a certain package into a corner where there was 
no room for it. 

“Tt won’t go in,” she sighed. 

“Sit on it!” suggested a voice from the other 
room. 

“T have,” Cynthia answered. “I’ve sat and 
sat and sat. But she won’t be wedged down, so 
I'll just have to leave her home. Anyhow, it’s 
perfectly silly to cart a foolish little Dresden 
China Shepherdess all around the world! JT'll 
just leave her bowing and scraping to her little 
Mr. Dresden China Shepherd on the other cor- 
ner of the mantle.” 

“Oh but, Cyn dear, you must take the shep- 
herdess, you simply must! She’s your mascot— 
she looks exactly as you looked when you were 
Miss Bo-Peep in the senior play, and when the 
girls in the cast gave her to you you vowed that 
never you twain should part! Squeeze her in 
somehow, Cyn; if you don’t have a mascot along 
how’ll you ever get home safely? ” 

“Then join me on the lid, darling! ” Cynthia 
called. And with a double weight on top of her 
the shepherdess obligingly sank face downward 
into darkness. The trunk.was locked; which left 


[4] 


ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


the Dresden china shepherd with a very cold 
bleak look in his blue china eye, for nothing could 
be more forlorn than to keep holding a china 
hand over a china heart as he china-gazed at— 
nothingness! 

But you need not waste sympathy on him, be- 
ing merely a doll; for there was Cynthia’s flesh- 
and-blood family holding what her young brother 
called ‘“ Handkerchief Day,” as they wiped their 
eyes and listened for that gay little voice which 
was not to be heard for so long. 

“Now she’s in San Francisco 

“Now she’s going on board the steamer 

“It’s noon! The steamer’s off! Oh, I do hope 
she wont be sick.” 

Cynthia was hoping this also, for it was very, 
very rough. 

“T thought you told me this ocean was called 
the Pacific! ” she complained to the Second Offi- 
cer with a disappointed look in her violet-gray 
eyes. “‘ When I went to school pacific meant 
peaceful, but look at those waves! Just look at 
them! ” 

The Second Officer looked. He was very sorry 
the way they forced such a good ship to knock 
down stars with her bow and stir up the sea-bed 


[5] 


99 





99 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


with her stern. But being only the Second Mate 
there was not much that he could do, although 
he promised very faithfully to report her com- 
plaint to the Captain. 

“Oh, thank you,” Cynthia cried gratefully, 
“then I’m sure this won’t happen again!” 

And curiously enough, it didn’t! For there 
were quiet blue waves ever after, with the sea 
quite like blue crépe paper. Cynthia paced the 
deck for hours at a time and hated to go indoors 
to eat or to sleep. But one day she heard singing. 
It was a hymn. 

“ But this isn’t Sunday, is it? ” she asked ina 
very bewildered fashion, for it is amazing how 
Tuesday and Friday and Sunday can seem so 
exactly alike when there is day after day after 
day of crinkling blue waves and more sky than 
could be seen in any town. 

“No, it isn’t Sunday, it’s missionaries!” her 
friends explained. 

Now Cynthia had known a missionary once. 
A large and jolly man from the very middle of 
some desert, and she had always wished that her 
particular home town had not been so small and 
unimportant, for otherwise he might have come 
back to tell more about Arabs and camels and 


[6] 


ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


sand-storms. She wondered if by any chance 
this particular hero might be one of the singers 
below deck. 

“T’m going to see!” she exclaimed. 

“What? On this grand afternoon?” every 
one cried protestingly. 

“There'll be tomorrow,” Cynthia twinkled 
recklessly as she hurried to the meeting, only to 
receive the shock of her life! For instead of the 
Large Man From The Desert there was the lit- 
tlest Plain Gray Lady you ever saw. 

So little, so plain, and so gray that Cynthia 
wondered she had not been blown overboard dur- 
ing the terrific two days’ gale. “I think Il not 
stay to hear any one so plain and gray,” said 
Cynthia to herself, and was about to rush back 
to the sunshine again when the Little Plain Gray 
Person uttered one sentence so utterly surpris- 
ing that Cynthia really had to linger to hear the 
next sentence. 

For imagine any unknown little lady saying 
calmly, “ What I need more than any other one 
thing in the world is a new china shepherdess.”’ 

Well! 

Cynthia sat down on a back seat instantly, in 
order to hear the rest of this amazing desire. 


[7] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“The trouble with me is,” sighed the Plain 
Gray Lady, “I find myself too popular! I’m 
always a lady in haste. There ought to have 
been two of me, or maybe even three! For I 
have my school to teach, and that’s my real work. 
I’ve had it for twenty years now, such a nice 
little Chinese school with green tile roofs tipping 
up at the corners—a little school brimful to the 
very door-jambs with girls in blue cotton jackets 
and trousers. They even overflow the door- 
jambs out into my hallways. I can’t send home 
any little blue-cotton pupils, they’re so stupid and 
so eager and so precious when they come, then 
in a few years’ time they turn out to be so wise 
and so useful and so doubly precious. All my 
life I seem to have been turning stupid blue- 
cotton pupils into bright blue-cotton pupils! It’s 
a career in itself. The ‘Real Me’ never wants 
to give it up; never! ” 

“You are an adorably Plain Gray Full-of-fun 
Darling!’ Cynthia smiled to herself. “ Blue- 
cotton pupils, indeed! What a jolly way to talk; 
it beats the Man From The Desert.” And of 
course she continued to sit on the back seat listen- 
ing for the shepherdess part of the story. 

“But what am I to do, being so popular?” 


[8] 


ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


laughed the Plain Gray Lady. “ For there’s my 
school full to the brim, every blessed girl need- 
ing to know everything from alphabets to tooth- 
brushes. And these blue-cotton pupils have 
mothers. One by one these mothers invite me to 
come and sit in their house; or if they fail to 
invite me, I feel that it is all the more urgent to 
go of my own accord. Although I may seem 
very little to you, in their eyes I am satisfactorily 
big and important. I settle things! I settle 
about the row of idols on the godshelf—what to 
do with them when the family becomes Chris- 
tian. I settle about the pig. He is so precious. 
Wealth, on four feet! Why, oh, why do I object 
to his sleeping under the bed? I speak of disease 
- germs and uncleanness. We talk for hours of 
pigs and baths, and somehow or other this al- 
ways ends up with my strange ‘ save-the-world- 
doctrine.’ They are so curious about it! I want 
them to be curious! That’s what I came to China 
for, to make people curious about Christ. It’s 
kept me there for twenty years, it’s taken all my 
spare moments, and always bedtime comes before 
I have seen half the people needing me that day. 
Oh, if there could only be two of me, so that one 
could teach arithmetic and Bible in my green- 


[9 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


tiled school while the other visited the little 
crooked houses on the little crooked streets. ‘Go 
slowly! Go slowly!’ they say to me with their 
Chinese politeness when I bow myself away from 
their thresholds. Indeed, I get quite flustered 
by so much hospitality, for little plain gray spin- 
sters become heavy-hearted when they never 
finish half their work. With so many lost sheep, 
surely you see how I need a new China Shep- 
herdess? ” 

Cynthia squirmed uneasily. “Oh, it’s not a 
china China Shepherdess she wants but a human 
China Shepherdess! Well, that sets me free! I 
thought maybe I’d have to part with my nice lit- 
tle mascot. But I’m safe! ” | 

But of course you can see that this did not set 
Cynthia free, by any manner of means. Neither 
was she safe. Not a bit of it! For the little 
thought came creeping into her mind that once 
upon a time she had made the beguilingest kind 
of a Miss Bo-Peep whose specialty had been lost 
sheep 

“Oh dear, why did I ever come to this meet- 
ing? And why am I thinking all this about my- 
self? She doesn’t mean me! Of course she 
doesn’t. She never saw me before. She doesn’t 


[10] 





ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


even dream [’m in the room now.” (But that 
was not true, for no one could possibly overlook 
Cynthia in any room!) “ And I don’t believe in 
missions anyhow. At least, not much! Those 
people have their own gods.” 

Indeed they did have their own gods! The 
Plain Gray Lady was telling things about them. 
Rather horrid, awful things. Cynthia felt sorry 
to be hearing such things. 

“When I see these idols of China,” sighed 
the Plain Gray Lady in closing, “then how I do 
wish there were three of me, for one of me would 
do nothing but haunt the temples and the little 
wayside shrines to tell the disappointed worship- 
ers my wonderfully good news—a God touched 
with every feeling of their infirmities! This al- 
ways surprises them so much, for they really do 
have infirmities in China—appalling ones! In- 
deed, if there could only be four of me, I’d be a 
doctor, too.” 

Then everybody had to laugh at this amazing 
little lady. So small, and yet so eager to be four 
others! It was quite evident that the audience 
loved her. Cynthia loved her, too. She loved 
her so much that she said fiercely: “ I’d like to 
have the kind of medals they pin on soldiers for 


[11] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


valor. I’d pin them all over her! I’d kiss her on 
both cheeks, like Papa Joffre! The brave little, 
dear little, tired little heroine! Always snowed 
under with work. And so old! Surely she 
ought to be knitting by somebody’s fireplace with 
a cozy old tabby-cat purring beside her.” 

Since she had no medals and no fireplace and 
no cat, Cynthia rushed up on deck and marched 
round it and round it and round it, rather sav- 
agely. Her lovely violet-gray eyes looked posi- 
tively black. 

“Just the same, I don’t believe in missions 
shé said to the blue waves. 

The blue waves were making white caps here 
and there, entirely unconcerned. ‘Oh! don’t 
you?” they seemed to chuckle, and went right on 
making white caps. So the girl who owned a 
china China Shepherdess went down to her little 
cabin to dress for dinner, muttering crossly, “ A 
perfect waste of money! ” 

But that was at night. 


{*? 


[12] 





You can plainly see that a Chinese wheelbarrow is an entirely 
different affair from any ever seen in America. Even this picture 
is not so complicated as it should be, because it has been drawn 
simpler on purpose to show you how you can make one for your- 
self from a narrow tan box lid, a circle of tan cardboard for 
a wheel, and a few toothpicks for the curious arch-like frame 
over the wheel. (This can be omitted if too difficult.) Slit the 
seat smoothly along the center of the box lid and wedge the 
wheel through the slit. Thread a needle with a piece of string, 
double it, and tie the two ends together into as big a knot as 
possible. Then (1) at the spot marked X on the wheelbarrow 
seat poke your needle through; (2) next sew through the hub 
of the wheel, once; (3) bring the thread through the seat on 
the other side corresponding to X, and tie another big knot. Cut 
away the back part of the lid leaving only handle-bars. For the 
coolie use pedler pattern in Chapter XVIII; and for the long 
line of school-less girls use Blue Belles from Chapter IX. 


ml UT fla ET 
LAT AL I LS 7 Th 


“ For every pair of bound feet there is a bed of tears.” 
“Tf you don’t scale the mountain you can’t see the view.” 


“The summer insect cannot speak of ice; the frog in the 
bottom of the well should not talk of the heavens.” 


Mi! 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES 
PINCHED 


CynTuia felt quite differently when she woke 
up in the morning, stiff and cramped, with her 
feet hurting her in a truly agonizing fashion. 
Peculiar! She couldn’t imagine what ailed them; 
she rolled over in bed and found to her amaze- 
ment that she was lying on bricks—bricks? 
She touched them experimentally. Yes, bricks! 
Rather like a shelf it seemed. Of all puzzling 
things—how did she ever get there? She climbed 
down, but began at once to wince and whimper 
with pain. 

“Sh!” said somebody who seemed to be her 
grandmother, reaching for a switch that seemed 
only too ready-to-use, “don’t say that again, 
you'll wake everybody, you provoking young bag- 
gage! Back to bed with you at once,” and there 
came the sudden stinging switch of the switch on 
her arms. 

She was never so surprised in her life! Who 
was this amazing old grandmother-person? And 


[15] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


why was she being treated like a little, little girl? 
A dozen sentences rushed to her lips at once, but 
what she actually found herself gasping as she 
tottered away from the energetic old lady, was: 
“O Venerably Aged, I really didn’t say a word! 
Really I didn’t, Honorably August!” (This 
seemed a strange way to address anybody; she 
pinched her arm to be sure that she was properly 
awake. She was.) 

“Tut! Tut!” grumbled Granny. “ All night 
long haven’t you been babbling that something 
was a perfect waste of money, and now you’re 
talking again, you miserable cry-baby! Stop it, 
I say!” And there was another crack of the 
switch, sharp, quick, stinging. 

Cynthia gasped again: “Oh, please! Please, 
Respected One, I’m not a cry-baby, but my feet— 
my feet—they hurt me so terribly, they feel like 
pounded jelly.” 

“Of course they do, you foolish little idiot. 
Just like all the rest of us you’re proving the truth 
of the proverb that ‘for every pair of golden 
lilies there’s a bed of tears.’ Well, did you sup- 
pose your golden lilies were going to be any dif- 
ferent from anybody’s else? Get back into 
bed! ” 


[ 16 ] 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


“ But I can’t see any bed to get back into, and 
I h-haven’t any g-golden I-lilies. Oh dear! Oh 
dear! whatever makes everything seem so pecu- 
han? 

What indeed? 

For by this time she had awakened the entire 
_household; there stood Grandfather blinking 
solemnly through his big horn glasses; there 
stood the Fat Uncle with his curving fierce mus- 
tache draping his lips; there stood the Thin Uncle 
who looked so very cross, and the Deaf Uncle 
who thunderingly demanded to know what this 
worm of a she-child meant by awaking everybody 
at daybreak. 

“It’s her golden lilies,” shouted Grandmother 
loudly into the ears of this, her eldest son. 

“La! La!” shrugged the various sleepy aunts 
and cousins, “is that all? What did the little 
goose expect to feel, anyhow? She ought to have 
had them bound years and years ago.” | 

Them? Bound? 

Cynthia glanced down at her feet and gasped 
with surprise at the astonishing thing she saw— 
trousers! Blue-cotton trousers! And peeping 
out from under the trousers the most absurdly 
awful little feet, just a few inches long, bound 


[17] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


round and round with tight deforming bandages. 
A curious sudden notion popped into her brain 
and from there to her lips. 

“Am I—am I— C-Chinese?” she managed to 
stutter, but even as she said it she knew the words 
weren’t English at all. She was actually speak- 
ing and understanding another tongue entirely. 

There was a thick silence. It seemed to last 
for hours and hours. Then came Grandfather’s 
voice booming through the dusky stillness: “A 
demon has certainly stolen the child’s wits away.” 

“‘ She’s been babbling strangely all night long,” 
sighed Grandmother. “It’s the pain. We've all 
been through it.” 

“You never heard me ask who I was, 
though!” sneered the Top-Lofty Aunt whose 
feet were smaller than the smallest mouse you 
ever saw. The Changs boasted about those feet! 

“ The girl’s not worth her rice,” grunted the 
Sour Aunt. (Her feet, alas, were unfashionably 
large. Fully four inches long!) 

“She never has been worth her rice, stupid 
creature. However, since we’re all up, I suppose 
the thing to do is to have her make the morning 
offering to the kitchen god and then get us our 
“early rice.’ Hurry up, slow-poke!” 


[18 ] 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


Cynthia was forced to hobble painfully to the 
strangest-looking stove. Sleepy yawning aunts 
stood over her giving her weary directions. 
“Put the god in a good humor first, you silly!” 
“ But I don’t see any—god,” Cynthia breathed 
frantically, clasping her hands in dismay. Mercy 
-on us, did these outrageous women think that 
she was going to kneel down and worship a 
heathen idol? Not she! Why she was a Sunday- 
school-goer! She had been president of her 
college Y. W. C. A.! She knew the Ten Com- 
mandments by heart, and the first of those com- 
mandments especially and clearly said that 
But rude hands were poking her in the back, 
shoving her forward, forcing her down on her 
unwilling knees. Her forehead actually bumped 
the floor, and what was this gibberish she was 
muttering? 
Come God of the Kitchen, 
O Grandfather Chang! 
Come, here is your pudding 
And here is your tang. 
Go fly up to heaven 

Be gone in a trice, 
Forget all the bad 

And tell only what’s nice? 





1 Translated by Isaac T. Headland. 


[19 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Evidently it had been an offering of food she 
had laid before the paper picture on the wall over 
the stove. 

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” wailed Cynthia, scrambling 
to her feet, horror-stricken. ‘‘ You’ve made me 
break a commandment. Oh! Oh! Oh!” And 
she cried such gallons of tears that she could not 
see the rice or the rice-pots or the chop-sticks— 
or anything else, for that matter. 

“Commandment? ” echoed the aunts. 

““Y-yes, don’t you remember reading in 
Exodus, the twentieth chapter, how God wrote 

“ Reading?” echoed the aunts. 

“The poor girl is out of her wits,” sighed 
Grandmother, “‘ for who ever heard of a woman 
reading?” 

Who indeed? 

Cynthia began to think that she really had 
lost her wits. For things got “curiouser and 
curiouser”’ all day long, as Alice once said in 
Wonderland. For Cynthia never fully compre- 
hended what her family meant, and _ they 
were far from understanding her amazing stu- 
pidity about the simplest events of life. For in- 
stance, in the middle of the afternoon, when she 


[ 20 | 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


stood near the table waiting for the men and 
boys in the family to eat their “late rice,” she 
was mortified to see Grandfather throw his 
chicken bone on the floor when he was through 
with it. Then the Fat Uncle did the same untidy 
thing! And as for the boy cousins who ate so 
_ noisily, they, too, seemed to think that the floor 
was the only place for the remains of food. 

“Don’t!” ordered Cynthia in scandalized dis- 
gust. 

But Grandmother boxed her ears so soundly 
for this shocking unheard-of rudeness to these 
lordly elders, that Cynthia decided she really 
could not stand the life in this gloomy peculiar 
house another minute. She hobbled painfully 
and secretly through one door, down a narrow 
passage to another door, then through it to the 
gate. Ah, the street! And freedom. 

She hobbled along as fast as she could through 
the mud. What unusual roofs the houses had— 
they tipped up at the corners. She liked them, 
but they made her homesick for the rounded 
gables of a certain small white house so different 
from this topsy-turvy world in which she found 
herself at present. She could hardly believe that 
she was she! And then suddenly, clearly, she 


[ 21 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


heard voices singing. Oh, it was a clear song, a 
dear song— 


Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, 
It is not night if Thou be near. 


“Tt’s Christians! Christians!” Cynthia 
smiled, and danced eagerly toward the sound, 
forgetting her bound feet, forgetting every- 
thing but the bliss of reaching some one who 
would understand her at last. 

But would you believe it? 

Just as she was about to rush in excitedly, a 
woman—a sweet little Plain Gray Lady, lovely 
to look at—barred the doorway entirely: “ Don’t 
you darecomein! You don’t believe in missions! 
If you had your way, you wouldn’t let us have 
even this small rooftree for our own. You say 
it is a perfect waste of money! Oh, no, I really 
couldn’t let you in, for there’s happiness inside 
here, and you mustn’t interrupt us. You really, 
really mustn’t. Goaway! Go, go!” 

“ But where else can I go? ” Cynthia wailed in 
a small tired voice, for it looked so jolly inside. 
Just a tiny little place, but such a shiny little 
place, with its tidy blackboard and its rows of 
smiling blue-clad children—their prim blue- 


* [22] 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


trousered legs hung down so quaintly from the 
grown-up chairs. (‘‘ Mine would, too! Just like 
that,” thought the little Cynthia wistfully, before 
that closed door. ) 

“ You can go straight to bed! ” ordered the Fat 
Uncle puffing and blowing as he caught up with 
_ her and dragged her back to the House-with-the- 
Red-Tipped-Up-Roof. 

“Oh, so this is the bed, is it?’ Cynthia asked 
as she deposited herself on the brick kang again. 

“ Keep still!’ roared the Fat Uncle. 

She did. 

But she thought all the harder. About this 
sudden business of being Chinese: you had your 
feet bound, which certainly was unhealthy; you 
worshiped an idol, which certainly was unchris- 
tian; you could not read or write, which cer- 
tainly was uneducated; you dropped your chicken 
bones and vegetable parings on the floor, which 
certainly was untidy and unsanitary. 

And all the time there was that one tiny shiny 
house in town with children singing hymns. Oh, 
if only she could have gotten indoors 

“It’s a perfect waste of money!” a voice 
which seemed to be her own American voice was 
saying. 





[ 23 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“No! No! No!” cried her Chinese voice as 
she banged her golden lilies on the hard brick 
kang in protest at herself, until she felt the well- 
known flick of Grandmother’s switch on her arm. 
She cowered into the quilt and pretended to sleep 
like twenty sound sleepers. Then, when she felt 
sure that she was forgotten, she stealthily, quietly 
sat up in bed; she stealthily, quietly slipped off 
the kang; stealthily, quietly tiptoed through the 
network of doors and passages to the kitchen. 
She snatched some beans, some rice, a chicken 
wing; she wrapped them in a piece of cloth and 
tiptoed through the outer gateway to the street. 

“Tl find another place where Christians have 
a school,” she whispered to herself. But she 
trudged all over town, from East Gate to West 
Gate, from North Gate to South Gate, and there 
was no other mission school. Not one! 

“Oh, that’s too bad!” she sighed, not only for 
herself but because the town was big, and the 
only mission school was such a tiny, shiny little 
place, not nearly big enough. And then she saw 
a man with a wheelbarrow. The kind you ride 
in, if you are Chinese. She bowed to him po- 
litely, as you do bow, if you are Chinese, and 
asked him if he could honorably condescend to 


[ 24 ] 





BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


carry such a trifling nuisance as herself to the 
next town in his wheelbarrow. She bowed again 
as engagingly as she knew how, and said if it 
weren’t for her golden lilies she could walk, of 
course, but they were so painful and so ridicu- 
lously useless. 

“ Don’t use up the air in such flights of foolish 
gabbling,” he said in a very brusque fashion. 
* Why should you want to go to the next town? ”’ 

“ Because there’ll be a school in the next town 
and I want to finish my education. Don’t you 
know of a school in the next town where girls 
learn to read and write and multiply and subtract 
and parse and locate cities and parles-vous fran- 
GUESZ, = 

“Tt can’t be done! ” he said in his blunt way. 

“Oh, yes it can!” she almost answered, and 
then very wisely changed into far more flowery 
speech: ‘‘ Permit me modestly to differ from your 
exalted words of wisdom, Honorable Sir, for it 
can be done! It has been done! Insignificant as 
I doubtless seem to you, I, even I, can read and 
write and multiply and subtract and locate cities 
and parse and parles-vous francats.” 

“A demon has stolen the maid’s wits!” the 
man exclaimed—a bit nervously, too. 


[25 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


But Cynthia had an inspiration. Something 
told her to hop up on his wheelbarrow. She 
hopped. “ And now, if you will deign to bring 
me something to read, I’ll read it for you,” she 
promised, “but Ill not budge from this wheel- 
barrow in any case until we reach the nearest 
town where there’s a girl’s school.” 

Now the man had no books or newspapers or 
advertisements or letters or time-tables or any- 
thing of that sort on hand, for the simple reason, 
first, that he could not read a single word himself, 
and, second, because there were no newspapers or 
advertisements or time-tables in all that town. 
Not one. But there was Cynthia. And there 
was also his wheelbarrow. Inseparable, appar- 
ently! 

So, with a sigh, he started trundling her up- 
hill and down-hill. Up-hill and down-hill. Up- 
hill and down-hill. They went and they went, 
but they never seemed to get anywhere. Cynthia 
wished the wheelbarrow did not squeak so. 

“Do you think that if you pressed a bean into 
the works that the oil in the bean might stop the 
squeak? ”’ she inquired politely, and opened her 
bundle to get the bean. (I can’t imagine how she 
knew that beans had oil in them, can you?) 


[ 26 | 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


“The bean is more likely to stop the squeak in 
me,” said the man and popped it between his lips. 

“Perhaps you would like another,’ Cynthia 
smiled, for, after all, he was being very kind, and 
it certainly was a long ride. She held out her 
bundle toward him. 

I am sorry to say that he helped himself gener- 
ously to everything. All the beans. All the rice. 
All the chicken wing. It made Cynthia’s mouth 
water to hear him chew it with such gusto. 

“There doesn’t seem to be much left for me,” 
she announced gently. 

“No, but you're left!” said the man, with a 
scowl, and started trundling her once more, up- 
hill and down-hill, up-hill and down-hill. And, 
of course, the unpleasant squeak in the wheels 
was as bad as ever. It sang a little tune. A 
really horrid little tune. Monotonous. Hateful. 
This is what it said: “ A perfect waste of money! 
A perfect waste of money!” 

It made the trip seem longer than ever. 

“ Aren’t we nearly there? ” she asked. 

“No, we aren’t,” said the man, and the veins 
in his forehead stood out like ropes, from the 
effort he had to make in pushing her up-hill. 

“ Anyhow China’s a very pretty country, sir,” 


[ 27 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Cynthia remarked courteously, just to make con- 
versation. She pointed at the flaming banks of 
azaleas and the lovely purple hills ahead. 

“Ts it?” asked the man. And the veins that 
had been like ropes grew bigger than ever. Like 
cables. 

“ He is getting very tired,” Cynthia whispered 
to herself. Aloud she finally ventured to say once 
more: “I can hardly wait another minute! 
Aren’t we really almost there? ” 

“No, we aren’t,” snapped the mancrossly. “I 
thought you understood when you started out 
that schools for girls are so few and far between 
in China that half the population never even 
hear of them. I know, of course. Maybe I 
didn’t look as if I knew when you first spoke to 
me. But I did.” 

“T’m sure you did,” said Cynthia soothingly, 
and gently, for the veins which had been like 
cables grew larger in size. Like pipes. 

On and on and on and on they went, while the 
abominable wheels kept squeaking at her: “A 
per-fect w-waste of m-money? Oh, nev-er! No! 
No! No!” It began to sound like the thud of 
feet. Oh, surely it was the thud of feet. Cyn- 
thia turned her head, and there—all up and down 


[ 28 ] 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 
the hills and valleys in the road along which they 
had come—was a procession of Chinese girls. 
Blue-cotton trousered girls, trudging, trudging, 
trudging, each with her bundle of beans and rice 
for a journey. 

“ Oh, look! ” cried Cynthia. ‘ Just look who’s 
- behind you, sir.” 

“TI know,” said the man. ‘“ Haven’t I been 
pulling them along the entire route, Miss Stupid? 
Isn’t that the reason why we’re so behind the 
times—lagging while these girls caught up with 
your lve had to pull them and pull them and 
pull them to keep up their spirits. They think it’s 
a hopeless excursion. But I’m determined that 
if you are going to get an education they’re going 
to get one, too. Why not? They’re every bit as 
good as you!” 

“ Are they? ” asked Cynthia, squirming around 
in her seat until she sat riding backward to ad- 
mire their darling rose-leaf cheeks, their lovely 
slant eyes—some mischievous, some anxious, all 
eager. 

“Oh, I love them!” she cried. “I love every 
blessed one of them! And look how they stretch 
like a soft blue ribbon from here way out to the 
horizon line, up-hill and down-hill like re 


[ 29 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“ Weare here! ” the man interrupted. 

“Why, sure enough! So we are,” she gasped, 
surprised that in thinking of others she had 
shortened her trip until she had really arrived at 
the school. A sign over its gateway read, 
“ Heavenly—Education—Instilling School.” 

She stepped down from the wheelbarrow. 
“We are here at our school!” she said to the 
nearest girl, smiling. 

“We are here at our school,” the nearest girl 
said to the next nearest girl, who repeated it to the 
next nearest, and so it went buzzing the length 
of the line clear out to the dim horizon, until all 
down the hills and the valleys the sound of it rose 
like the murmur of bees: “Our school! Our 
school! Weare here at our school! ” 

Cynthia loved it. She ran through the gate- 
way and rang a bell. A teacher came. It was 
the same Plain Gray Lady-Teacher in the plain 
gray dress, with an Ingersoll watch on her wrist. 
The mere sight of such objects made Cynthia 
burst forth in English: “ Oh, you’ll never guess 
the funny funny time I’ve had in getting here! 
But now I’ve come - 

“Good gracious!” gasped the Plain Gray 
Lady, horror-stricken. ‘ You’re that awful girl 


[ 30 ] 





BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


who wants to shut our schools. You say they are 
a perfect waste of money. Go away from here at 
once. I don’t think you ought to be allowed on 
the premises; we can’t tell what you might do! 
Go away! Go away!” And would you believe 
it? She shut the door fast and bolted it safely 
“against this terrible enemy. 

And meanwhile the terrible enemy banged on 
the panels with one hand and pressed on the bell 
with the other: “Let me in!” she demanded. 
“ve changed my mind. Open the door and let 
mein. I take it all back, it isn’t a waste of money 
at all, not when it means such adorable girls as 
these. Oh, open the door—open it! Open it! 
Open it! I’m as safe as a mouse. I’m as tame 
asacat. I’masniceas you please. Oh, open the 
door! Open the door!” 

But the Plain Gray Lady inside had run to 
spread the horrible news: “ There’s a girl out- 
side. She’s the Girl-Who-Doesn’t-Believe-In- 
Missions.” 

“That one? Oh, the mean old thing!” cried 
the blue-cotton pupils in terror. “ Don’t let her 
get at us; she may try to send us back home. She 
thinks we’re a perfect waste of money. Don’t 
listen, dear honorable teacher, we pray you!”’ 


[ 31 | 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“My darlings, you’re safe!” said the Plain 
Gray Lady, and they all stuffed their fingers in 
their ears. 

But meanwhile Cynthia thumped on that door: 
“Tt’s not for myself that I’m asking!” she 
shouted. “It’s for all these dear Chinese girls. 
They’re so hot and so dusty and tired. They 
hardly dare believe that Chinese girls can learn 
to read—oh, let them in! Please let them in!” 

But the door stayed shut. Tight shut. 

She rang. She banged. She clanged. “Oh, 
if you once could see them with their little bun- 
dles in their arms and their faces all so eager and 
soanxious. Pleaselet themin! Please! Please! 

No answer. 

But the very stillness seemed to echo down 
those hills and valleys where the ribbon-line of 
girls stood waiting wearily. 

Cynthia pressed close against the panels, kiss- 
ing them in a passion of unselfish longing: “O 
lovely doors, open! Open! These girls must all 
come in—please open! ” 

But the winds of heaven whispered through 
the treetops: “ It was this girl herself who closed 
the doors. She said it was a perfect waste of 
money to have missions.” 


[ 32 ] 


BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


The little Chinese birds up in those treetops hid 
their heads beneath their Chinese wings for very 
shame. The flowers by the wayside drooped and 
died. And one by one the line of girls turned 
straight around and started homeward. 

“Tt was all too good to be true!” their wail 
‘went sighing down the hills and valleys. 

But Cynthia knelt on the doorstep: “ What 
have I done? Oh, what have I done?” she cried, 
as the tramp of departing feet came thudding and 
padding into her ears. “ How can I let them go 
home to worship some useless old god of the 
kitchen? ” 

‘“What’s this about a kitchen, darling Cyn?” 
said a voice in her ear, as a kiss brought her to 
an upright position. 

“Oh, you knock for me!” she begged this 
voice. “ Knock, and tell the Plain Gray Lady to 
open the door and let the girls in. Quick! Quick! 
Don’t be so slow or those girls will get home! ”’ 

“Cynthia Drummond! Are you crazy?” 
asked the voice. ‘“ What door? What girls?” 

Cynthia opened her eyes. She saw a cool white 
cabin. She saw a small white berth. She saw an 
open port-hole. She heard the lapping of gentle 
waves against the side of a steamer. She saw 


[ 33 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


her roommate looking at her with startled eyes. 
That long line of patiently waiting girls seemed 
to have vanished into the bright morning air like 
a dream, but Cynthia had an uncomfortable feel- 
ing that they were waiting for her somewhere— 
where was it, now? Where? Where? 

She kissed her roommate, absentmindedly. 
She dressed quickly. She did not even wait for 
breakfast before finding the Plain Gray Lady. 

“What sort of a China Shepherdess do you 
think I would be?” she asked anxiously. 

The Plain Gray Lady smiled: “ How should I 
know? But I’ve been praying all night that God 
would give me a chance to find out, for during 
my talk yesterday I grew to loving you more and 
more. But you looked so rebellious! I can’t help 
but wonder what has made you so eager now?” 

“ Mostly because I spent the night in another 
girl’s shoes, and her golden lilies pinched me! 
Then, too, every single detail of your talk became 
such stuff as dreams are made of. But strangest 
of all was the curious coincidence of your men- 
tioning a China Shepherdess ws 

The Plain Gray Lady made her confession: 
“ There’s nothing strange about that! For every 
time I pass your stateroom door I see her sitting 


[ 34] 





BECAUSE THE GOLDEN LILIES PINCHED 


on your table. So that it was the most natural 
inspiration in the world to speak of a shepherdess 
when you came wandering into my meeting yes- 
terday and then started to wander out again so 
indifferently.” 

“T see! Well, life works out quite simply 
“sometimes, doesn’t it? Here I am with nothing 
whatever to do, and here you are with everything 
todo. If you think you could use me, I certainly 
want to be used.” 

You do not need to be told the answer, do you? 


[35 ] 








; an nh E 
eeognybannnny oe 
isi SEE 
CHINAS 
MILLIONS 
STARTING’ 
ovt 






2000 


Lee There is a 
really fascinating 

way to make these 
millions of people: Take 
“a piece of blue shelf-paper 
and pleat it into three-inch fold. 





ated Draw a Chinese man on the out- 
4 fpnenedl side fold, so that his sleeves reach the 
Sen aae edge of the paper. Cut out just as many 


PASS! folds at one time as possible; since the sleeves 


will be joined, the men will hold one another 
up, and by repeating your cut-outs a long line will stretch from 
the front to the back of a table, where a Chinese wall should 
be built, either of building blocks or of corrugated cardboard. 
It would also be interesting to place on the table first two home- 
made maps, one of the United States, the other of China, and 
prove to everybody’s satisfaction that if Pekin really sits down 
on Philadelphia the Eastern coast-lines of both countries will 
coincide. 


Mm Ui priate rt 
AAT aS FAT 


“ Don’t throw in your hook where there are no fish.” 


“ Better return home and make a net than go down to the sea 
and desire great fishes.” 


“The large fish eat the small fish; the small fish eat the water 
insects; the water insects eat water plants and mud.” 


III 
MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 


_ CYNTHIA was always being nicknamed—Cyn, 
Bo-Peep, the China Shepherdess; but the latest 
was Miss Marco Polo because she was about to 
discover China exactly as that ancient explorer 
had done back in the thirteenth century, only 
Cynthia’s discoveries were made in a deck-chair 
on a steamer in mid-ocean with cheerful missiona- 
ries offering all the facts she ought to know. 

“T’m afraid the only Polo about me will be 
this polo coat,” she sighed, stroking her shaggy 
top-coat regretfully, “for it’s shocking to have 
known the name ‘ China’ all my life and yet 
to be so really ignorant about it.” 

“ What do you know to begin with?” she was 
asked. 

She knit her brows: “ Well, only very sketchy 
facts, such as the yellow-skinned people, the fa- 
mous Chinese wall, bound feet, sedan-chairs. 
Just things like that.” 

“Enough to begin on,” the Plain Gray Lady 
assured her, “ but I think one of us should volun- 


[39 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


teer at once to teach this child Chinese geog- 
raphy?” 

“T, I, sir!” laughed a volunteer. 

“ Anybody primed with history? ” 

pL Lereiettl er eres 

“ Count on me!” 

“We'll all chip in occasionally,” the others 
added with such purpose in their voices that 
Cynthia rushed off to get a note-book. 

“China, my child, is a very big land,” the 
geography teacher began, in such a stiff school- 
marm fashion that Cynthia buried her head in 
her note-book and shook with laughter. 

“Yes, ma’am,” she finally said meekly, wiping 
her eyes, “ just how big a land might it be, if you 
please? ”’ 

“As I was about to state when interrupted by 
your unseemly levity, if one should lay the United 
States plus Alaska on top of China there would 
be room enough left on the margins for a fringe 
of half a dozen Great Britains and Irelands.” 

“Thank you,” Miss Marco Polo said, writing 
down, “ Size of China = 1 United States + 1 
Alaska + 6 Great Britains + 6 Irelands.” 

“Also, dear pupil, the east coast of China is 
shaped so much like the east coast of the United 


[ 40 ] 


MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 


States that if you should lay a map of China on 
a map of the United States with Peking at its 
latitude of 39° on top of Philadelphia at its lati- 
tude of 39° the two outlines would correspond 
very neatly. Does this suggest anything to your 
geographical instincts? ” 

~ “Tt suggests climate,” said the dear pupil 
brightly. “One climate like the other climate. 
And probably similar vegetation.” 

“Mark her 100!” gasped the remainder of 
the faculty. 

“Sh!” ordered the geography teacher sternly. 
“ Correct, my child. Oranges, rice, and cotton, 
in the south; wheat, corn, and beans, in the north, 
as well as apples, peaches, pears, and grapes in 
season.” 

Miss Marco Polo scribbled hastily, as her 
teacher added: “ Please note that China is di- 
vided into eighteen provinces, that it’s a republic, 
and draw a little five-barred flag, the red stripe 
on top standing for the Chinese within China’s 
republic, the yellow for the Manchus, the blue for 
the Mongolians, the white for the Tibetans, and 
the black for the Mohammedans.” 

* Next—population!” interrupted another pro- 
fessor reeling off statistics so fast that Cynthia’s 


Let] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


pencil point wore down to the wood as she tried 
to write everything down: “ Four hundred mil- 
lion people in China = four times as many as 
the population of the United States, or = the 
population of the United States + Great Britain 
+ Germany + Austria + France + Russia ‘++ 
Italy + a few other small countries.” 

“Too big!” gasped Cynthia. “ I can’t seem to 
grasp what that means.” 

“Tt means that one-fourth of all the human 
race is Chinese,” explained the geography 
teacher. : 

“Tt means that every fourth baby in the world 
coos up into the face of a Chinese mother!” sup- 
plemented the Plain Gray Lady. 

“It means, too, that every fourth bride is 
dressed in Chinese red.” 

“It means that every fourth person kneels be- 
fore a Chinese joss.” 

“ Oh, I see! ” Cynthia nodded. 

“Oh no, you don’t,” sighed her professor, 
“you couldn’t live long enough to see them all! 
Suppose I formed them in rank joining hands, 
then those four hundred millions could girdle the 
globe at the equator ten times over! Or suppose 
I made them into pilgrims and let two thousand 


[ 42 | 





MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 





of them walk past you every day and every night 
—you’d hear their ceaseless tramp! tramp! 
tramp! for five hundred years! ” 

“No,” Cynthia agreed solemnly, “I couldn’t 
possibly livelong enough. [really couldn’t. But 
how you ever figured this out by yourself I simply 
‘cannot imagine.” 

“Thank you for thinking I could,” her pro- 
fessor said gratefully, “ but as a matter of fact, 
I cribbed all the facts from Doctor Gracey’s little- 
great book called ‘China In Outline,’ he has a 
real genius for making figures live. You can’t 
forget, the way he puts them. For instance, I 
remember he computed that the Chinese die at 
the rate of thirty-three thousand a day. He said 
it would be just as if we buried all the people in 
New York City in three months! Or all the peo- 
ple in the United States in less than four years! 
I was literally staggered when I read those 
figures. I don’t mind telling you that they sent 
me straight to a medical college so that China 
could have at least one new doctor as soon as 
possible.” 

“ And a mighty good doctor! ” said the history 
professor as he took his turn in the teacher’s 
chair. ‘‘ Now that you’ve got the lay of the land 


[43 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


and an inkling of the number of people, it’s high 
time you began to be impressed about those peo- 
ple, little Miss Marco Polo.” 

“ But I am impressed,” this latest Chinese ex- 
plorer insisted, ‘“‘ indelibly impressed.” 

“Possibly. But impressed with mere quantity. 
We now proceed to show you that quality goes 
hand in hand. Asa slight comparison in antiqui- 
ties, how long ago did the Pilgrims first settle in 
America?” 

Cynthia subtracted hastily: “ Three hundred 
and four years ago.” 

“Yes. But three hundred and four years is 
a mere nothing as the Chinese reckon time. Try 
again. America goes back to Christopher Co- 
lumbus; how many years ago?” 

“ Four hundred and thirty-two years ago,” an- 
swered the arithmetical explorer, hoping that this 
would be a date to match up well with China. 

But no! “ My child, when Columbus set foot 
on our crude rude shores, the Chinese were al- 
ready such a highly civilized people that they had 
just completed a great canal 1,200 miles long, 
which is still in use today.” 

“ Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Marco Polo. 

Her professor enjoyed her surprise. “ Yet 


[ 44 ] 


MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 


even that is nothing compared to the fact that 
way back in the days when Abraham was travel- 
ing by camelback from Ur of the Chaldees, Chi- 
nese astronomers were recording observations 
which modern scientists find perfectly accurate. 
When Moses was leading the children of Israel 
through the Red Sea, China was 700 years old 
and had laws, literature, religion such as she has 
today. A hundred years before David wrote the 
Psalms, an emperor of China named Wung 
Wang was composing classics which Chinese 
scholars are still memorizing. A thousand years 
ago the Chinese were selling silk to the Romans 
who had no such fabrics of their own, while 
your ancestors and mine were savage Britons 
daubed with blue paint, fishing from tree-trunk 
canoes. China’s great wall was built over two 
hundred years before Christ was born. The 
Chinese had invented a compass, fire-arms, gun- 
powder, printing-presses, and paper hundreds of 
years before our forefathers ever dreamed of 
such things. In fact, Chinese records reach 
backward through four thousand rich years of 
literature, fine arts, and everything else.” 

Miss Marco Polo had discovered far more 
than she expected. Her note-book dangled from 


[45 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


one hand, her pencil from the other as she said 
in an awed voice: “ But this is simply stupen- 
dous! How dare we little three-hundred-year- 
old Americans go to a land four-thousand-years- . 
old with anything? ” 

Every one answered at once: 

“ They invented—but their religion never gave 
them enough ‘push’ to make the inventions 
count to the full.” 

“China has more coal and iron than all the rest 
of the world put together, but she has never dared 
mine it for fear of the dragon down under the 
earth. Tickle his ribs? Disturb his slumbers? 
No, never! So she freezes in winter.” 

“Half of the time the Chinese were afraid of 
their own inventions—beyond a certain point the 
gods would not be pleased to have mortals go.” 

“Custom! Age-old custom, the bane of China 
—‘ whatever grandfather did, do now!’ ” 

“T see,’ Cynthia nodded. “And, if you 
please, I’d love to hear more about the famous 
wall, for I know it’s one of the seven wonders of 
the world, without realizing why.” 

It was a fascinating story in itself, this tale of 
the Emperor Chin Shih Huang who began ruling 
when he was only thirteen years old. A born 


[ 46 ] 


MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 


hustler, however, considering the things he ac- 
complished in his life-time. Among other things, 
he was constantly annoyed by the wild Tartar 
tribes on the north who would come sweeping 
south destroying cities and towns on the way. 
Emperor Chin had an inspiration: he would build 
a wall and keep them out! And the wall should 
stretch from the ocean on the east to Tibet on 
the west. What matter if it needed to be fifteen 
thousand miles long? It is said that it took eight 
million men to build it, of brick and stone and 
lime. Up-hill and down-hill it stretches, any- 
where from twenty to sixty feet high, and so 
wide that two carts can pass side by side on it, 
or six horsemen ride abreast. The Chinese call 
it the “ Ten-thousand-li-Wall,” and although it 
was built over two thousand years ago, it is still 
standing in almost perfect condition. 

It was at this point that the Man-Who-Loved- 
Statistics offered another gem: “ There’s enough 
material in that wall to build a smaller wall six 
feet high around the entire globe! ” 

“Tf you keep on putting things around the 
globe [ll never get to China!” Cynthia warned 
him. “And my hat’s off to your Mr. Chin! I 
suppose China was named for him? ” 


[ 47 | 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“Tt was. But I wonder if you will keep on 
liking him when I tell you that he wanted to be 
known as the first of all the emperors, so he or- 
dered that every book in the empire should be col- 
lected and burned. I have seen the village built 
today on the ‘ Slope of the Burning Books ’ where 
Emperor Chin made his enormous bonfire of all 
the old Confucian books. That was crime 
enough, but he had a deep pit dug in which nearly 
three hundred luckless scholars were buried alive 
up to their necks, after which heavy chariots were 
driven over their heads—and all because they 
would not give up their books. Are you still 
liking the old gentleman? ” 

Cynthia’s eyes were like saucers: “No! No! 
What a horrible person! I suppose there wasn’t 
a book left?” | 

“Not on paper. But the Chinese have pro- 
digious memories. Each generation inherits the 
faculty of learning the classics poll-parrot 
fashion, so that after Chin died another emperor 
was able to find an old man, named Fu Sheng, 
who could repeat all the ‘ Five Classics’ from 
memory. But he was over ninety years old and 
his hand far too unsteady to paint the characters, 
Even his voice was too husky and thick for any- 


[ 48 ] 


MISS MARCO POLO DISCOVERS CHINA 


body else to understand except his grand- 
daughter, a little girl of thirteen. So it was her 
hand which wrote down every single one of those 
five books, which present-day Chinese scholars 
memorize.” 

“Hurrah for the thirteen-year-old lassie who 
got the better of a thirteen-year-old laddie! AI- 
though I suppose Emperor Chin was grown up 
by the time he burned the books. And now I’m 
going to admit frankly that the more I know of 
China the more I marvel how the first missiona- 
_ ries dared to go there! Indeed, I marvel how 
I dare go myself, stupid me! But of course it’s 
safe nowadays, and so many Chinese want us 
and welcome us. But wasn’t it quite different in 
the early days? ” 

“Quite different,” came a chorus of voices, 
each quick to add an illustration: 

“Take the case of Robert Morrison, for 
instance : 

“And Peter Parker with his lancet a 

“As for John Kenneth MacKenzie 4 

“ Don’t leave out James Gilmour, for he was a 
Robinson Crusoe if ever anybody was one!” 

“Wait till you hear about Hudson Taylor 


+P] 











[ 49 | 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Cynthia opened her note-book once more: 
“ Tell me!” she cried eagerly. “ But do tell me 
one at a time—lI’ve only two ears and one 
brain! ” 

The next few chapters are what they told her, 
one at a time. 


[50] 





No, this is not a porcupine! Nor a pin-cushion! It is the 
manikin which the quack doctors of China study when they 
want to locate the seven hundred places where it is supposedly 
safe to puncture a patient’s body. You can model such a manikin 
from moulding clay, then stick it full of bristling needles to show 
what a painfully ignorant person any Dr. Pincushion must be. 

It will be quite simple to cut out enough pill-bottles from white 
cardboard to distribute to each of your class (four can be cut 
out at one time). Color the corks brown and the cross red. 
On the remainder of the label let each person write the Bible 
verse which seems to him or her the most appropriate for a 
Christian doctor to quote to a poor Chinese patient. 


minmstetn 
PRAM <O mt 


“ When one leaf moves all the branches shake.” 


“Past events are clear as a mirror; future events are as dark 
as lacquer.” 


“A doctor kills his patients but he suffers no penalty.” (?) 


IV 
OPENING CHINA WITH A LANCET 


_ You can lay a peck of Chinese trouble any day 
at Doctor Pincushion’s door, for of all the quacks 
on earth he is the worst, yet for a thousand years 
at least he and his predecessors have been prac- 
tising their peculiar brand of learning on the sick 
of China—Goose-feather Poultices? Tiger-hair 
Broth? Spider Soups? 

“Oh well, these are only mild medicines,” 
boasts the modest Doctor Pincushion, impor- 
tantly. “If you are really sick I can concoct still 
stronger pills from a combination of old rusty 
coffin-nails, bats’ wings, dried scorpions, snake- 
skins, cockroaches, tigers’ teeth, a sliver of your 
grandmother’s finger-nail, and perhaps a little 
mud from the middle of your fireplace. Pretty 
strong! Strong enough to drive out twenty de- 
mon-dragons from your honorable insides.” 

But just in case your demon-dragon does not 
“exit? even after such pills, then Doctor Pin- 
cushion knows the cure of cures. For in his 
home he keeps a little wooden model of a man 


[ 53] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


bristling with several hundred little spikes—oh, 
a very pincushion of a fellow, he! And several 
hundred other spikeless spots freckle this curious 
manikin to show where needles can be poked in 
a human patient without killing him. 

Solemnly Doctor Pincushion approaches you. 
Solemnly he sticks his long sharp needle into a 
corresponding spot upon your suffering body: 
“To let the pain demon escape,” he explains, 
pompously. And if your particular little demon 
does not rush out through the first hole, you will 
remember that there are several hundred other 
places where Doctor Pincushion can puncture 
you. 

“No! No! No!” you scream in a panic. 
“This is ridiculous. This can never cure me.” 

“Oh, very well,” says your ever-ready quack, 
and heats a coin red-hot, putting it where the pain 
is worst, for surely any such torture ought to 
frighten off.the most bold of evil spirits. Per- 
haps you still feel that pain? He is not without 
other remedies. He solemnly advocates shaking, 
since in the process the little spiteful demon will 
surely be dislodged and seek a more steady rest- 
ing-place. 

Your fond relatives are nothing if not oblig- 


[ 94 ] 


OPENING CHINA WITH A LANCET 


ing! They shake you and shake you and shake 
you, until you see stars, until the floor flies up to 
the ceiling, and the ceiling sails around like a 
cloud. 

“Oh, I want a real doctor!’ you call, ungrate- 
fully overlooking the many ideas your resource- 
ful quack has suggested. 

“ But I’m all the doctor there is!”’ he assures 
you. And you have learned the dreadful fact 
that for hundreds and thousands of years China 
has known nothing better than this, that the 
_ Doctor Pincushions of other years have had only 
one manner of diagnosing disease: by the pulse. 
It is not necessary to see the patient—no; simply 
place your right hand on a book to steady it and 
let Doctor Pincushion press three fingers on the 
pulse in one wrist—how hard he thinks! For 
from this pulse he thinks he can learn the condi- 
tion of your lungs and heart. Now please let him 
feel the other pulse, for then he can guess about 
your stomach and your liver. Pure guesswork, 
naturally, but Doctor Pincushion is so courteous, 
so willing to make another guess if the others 
were wrong. 

“Five tubes lead from the mouth to the stom- 
ach,” he informs you, “ soup must go down the 


[ 59 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


soup-tube and rice go down the rice-tube. But if 
soup goes down the rice-tube, and rice goes down 
the soup-tube there will be trouble! Now per- 
haps that is what ails you today!” 

Perhaps! 

And this is all China had for so long. It 1s all 
that half of China has now. Except, of course, 
that there are charms written on special yellow 
charm-paper to be written out and pasted up 
around the sick-room or even on the patient’s 
forehead. The ashes of such charms when 
burned ought to be a marvelous remedy. You 
have swallowed them many times when every- 
thing else failed. 

But your greatest trouble comes if your eyes 
are dim or in pain, for then Doctor Pincushion 
has two cures: he tries putting ground glass in 
your eye. What? It hurts! Of course it hurts 
—perhaps he will puncture the eyeball with one of 
his needles to let in more light; after which you 
are blind indeed—stumbling by night, groping by 
day; praying to your Chinese gods to help you, 
laying rice upon their shrines, begging, pleading, 
hoping that some day—somewhere—somehow— 
you can be helped. 

All this, and worse, Robert Morrison saw when 


[56 ] 





OPENING CHINA WITH A LANCET 


he was so busy translating the Bible inside that 
quiet lonely room of his. He knew it had been 
going on for years and years; but would it go on 
for ages more? 

Not if Dr. Peter Parker knew it! For exactly 
two months after Mr. Morrison’s death this fine 
young American doctor landed in China; and 
would you believe it? before he left home people 
said it was a pity for a young man of such talents 
“to throw himself away on the heathen.” But 
down in his heart he knew that to the great Lord 
Of All the yellow-skinned people were as dear as 
the white-skinned, and far more in need of a 
doctor. 

And you, so blind and hopeless only a few 
paragraphs back in this story, what are you going 
to think of this newcomer? Will you go rushing 
for a prescription on the opening day? Oh, 
mercy no! You wag your head in terror and tell 
me the most outrageous stories: how this horrible 
white devil doctor from over the ocean makes his 
medicine from the eyes and hearts of kidnapped 
Chinese children! Everybody in Canton believes 
it. Also he grinds their baby bones to powder; he 
stews their limbs and corks them up in bottles. 

It was no wonder, therefore, that on Doctor 


[ 57 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Parker’s first day in his new hospital only one 
lone, lorn woman ventured in; I dare say her 
heart was beating like a trip-hammer as she won- 
dered what stiff magic might hurt her any mo- 
ment. But only three months later Doctor 
Parker was prescribing for a hundred or more 
patients each day—people from all classes: beg- 
gars in rags, stately officials, richly gowned 
ladies, everybody came! Some of the patients 
would come the night before in order to get first 
place in the line at the gateway, sleeping on their 
mats spread near the door. The Chinese never 
heard of such magic cures. No one seemed to be 
too sick for Doctor Parker! 

Fascinating stories are told of his patients. 
One old gentleman of Canton who had not seen 
for years and years was so delighted when 
Doctor Parker restored his sight that he begged 
to have a Chinese artist paint the doctor’s por- 
trait in order that he might hang it up in his 
house and bow before it every morning! 

Doctor Parker specialized in eye troubles, and 
one day his fame traveled two hundred miles 
from Canton to a little town where a certain 
young man was greatly worried about his old 
blind mother. He decided that a good son would 


[ 58 ] 


OPENING CHINA WITH A LANCET 


certainly take his mother to this remarkable man! 
Well, wasn’t he a good son? Therefore he must 
take her at once. He was much too poor to hire 
a sedan-chair and coolies to carry it, but he po- 
litely bundled the old lady on one side of his 
wheelbarrow, with bedding and rice-bags to bal- 
ance on the other side; and away he started. 

His neighbors were scandalized: “ Go slowly! 
Go slowly!” they warned him. ‘ You will send 
the poor old lady as a guest on high! Surely she 
will join her ancestors before you reach Canton.” 

“Rest your hearts!” he answered. “ She will 
not die.” 

But he was not so certain as he sounded. He 
trundled the heavy wheelbarrow up-hill and 
down-hill; in each strange village the crowds in 
the street would question him curiously: “ Where 
are you taking the ancient? ” 

“To a Christian’s hospital in Canton to get 
new eyes.” 

“Christians? But those over-the-ocean men 
use magic! You will be bewitched! Dear, dear, 
what a crazy man you are!” 

All along his route, day after day, that son saw 
nothing but wagging heads and sneering lips. 
Finally he reached Canton. The doctor ex- 


[59 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


amined her eyes—yes! a delicate and serious 
operation might save her old eyes. He operated. 
For two wonderful months she lay in that hos- 
pital cot hearing every day the surprising story 
of Jesus Christ. She listened—she loved it—she 
believed. And in two months she could see! 
Surely you can picture their journey homeward. 
How at every stop in all those little villages peo- 
ple would swarm around that wheelbarrow, 
crying: 

“Why, here you are! Here you are 

“Here Iam!” she chuckled. “ Seeing! . Re- 
joicing! And I have a new God—listen!” It 
took far longer to reach home than it had taken 
to go to Canton because the new Christians tar- 
ried everywhere along the way to tell their won- 
derful news of a Saviour. They opened their 
precious Bible. The son read aloud from it. 
The mother explained it. It makes us think how 
happy Robert Morrison would have felt to see 
his Bible being prized so dearly. That wheel- 
barrow left behind it, through two hundred miles 
of Chinese country, a new string of little towns 
interested in Christianity. Multiply the one 
wheelbarrow by countless other vehicles full of 
delighted patients, and you will understand why 


[ 60 J 


{?? 


OPENING CHINA WITH A LANCET 


Peter Parker could say about himself a remark 
famous today all over the world: 

“I have opened China at the point of a 
lancet!” 

When Doctor Parker had his first furlough 
home in America he was invited to preach before 
Congress in Washington to an audience made up 
of senators and representatives. His sermon 
must have been quite different from any those 
men had ever heard before, for he told about his 
Canton hospital where 8,000 patients had been 
treated in five years; he told stories of those pa- 
tients—how one old man who had had cataracts 
on his eyes for over forty years had a successful 
operation and said, stroking his long flowing 
beard, “I have lived till my beard has become 
long and hoary, but never before have I seen or 
heard of one who does such things as are done in 
this hospital! ” 

It was remarks like this which gave Doctor 
Parker such a perfect chance to explain about the 
Greatest Physician Of All who long years ago in 
Galilee had opened the eyes of the blind and 
preached the gospel to the poor, ever promising 
His followers, however, “ Greater works than 
these shall ye do because I go to My Father.” 


[ 61 ] 





When a little circle of listeners has heard the story of Eleanor 
Chestnut, surely they will more easily remember that their hands 
count, too, if you distribute pencils and a number of paper hands, 
one to each person, so that on the palm may be written the verse 
given in the story, ‘ Christ has no hands but our hands.” 

Draw an outline of your own left hand on a sheet of paper to 
get a pattern; then cut out at least ten thicknesses of paper at 
one time. 


mm prla-——snM 
La A Tih aD A 


“Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to 
burn incense.” 


“Tf you walk on snow you cannot hide your footprints.” 


“ A wise man in a fool’s service is a clear pearl thrown into 
lacquer.” 


V 
HANDS ACROSS THE’ SEA 


- CYNTHIA says that when she first went to 
Sunday school, long years ago in the primary 
department, she remembers how she used to 
throw back her cunning golden head, and warble 
her very loveliest when the children sang “I 
Think When I Read that Sweet Story of Old.” 
Her especially favorite verse began: 


I wish that His hands had been placed on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 

And that I might have seen His kind look when He said: 
“ Let the little ones come unto Me.” 


She says that all her life she has wondered 
how it would be to feel those dear kind wonderful 
hands. 

“ And, do you know? on shipboard the mis- 
sionaries told me stories which seemed to answer 
all my years of wondering. But the especial 
story was about Eleanor Chestnut. Somehow, 
when they told me of Robert Morrison and Peter 
Parker and Hudson Taylor I felt actually too lit- 


[ 65 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


tle and unimportant for words. I went to my 
stateroom and cried. I said to the Plain Gray 
Lady: ‘I couldn’t possibly follow in their foot- 
steps! I’m not nearly big enough or brave 
enough or wise enough or patient enough. Why, 
I’m not going to be any sort of good as a mis- 
sionary! I decided too impulsively, I fear. For 
I see now that I’ll get tired and discouraged and 
—and cross. You'll want to pack me straight 
home. I remember you told me that in the early 
days of Chinese Christianity somebody called it 
the not-to-be-knocked-down-doctrine. Well, I’m 
the kind that could easily be knocked down. I’m 
not a heroine. I’m just little Miss Cynthia 
Drummond.’ But oh! if you could have heard 
my Plain Gray Lady talk, then you’d understand 
why I’m still on the job! ” 

For the Plain Gray Lady repeated softly: 
“Little Miss Cynthia Drummond: A China 
Shepherdess. But it sounds all right to me, my 
dear.” 

“Sounds! Yes, maybe! But can’t you see I 
haven’t a single shining talent? Imagine me 
living alone, like James Gilmour! Or fighting 
mobs, like Hudson Taylor! Or translating 
Bibles, like Robert Morrison! I’m the most 


[ 66 ] 


HANDS ACROSS THE SEA 


ordinary girl—you have no idea how ordinary I 
am,” Cynthia said dismally. 

“Really?” laughed the Plain Gray Lady. 
“That’s a very wholesome feeling, you know. 
Especially when you have a pair of hands.” She 
picked up Cynthia’s hands and looked at them 
intently. “Suppose I tell you a story about a 
pair of hands belonging to a girl who never had 
half your chances.”’ 

And this is the story she told of Eleanor Chest- 
nut: “Almost any American girl has had an 
easier life than she ever had, because her parents 
died when she was so little that she grew up poor 
and needing to work for all her tuition, clothes, 
and board through school and college, and later 
through medical college as well. Her best friend 
writes of those days, ‘ Eleanor lived in an attic, 
cooked her own meals and nearly starved.’ But 
she had decided to train herself for medical mis- 
sionary service, and in time she found herself in 
China, in charge of a hospital at Lien-chou. She 
was often lonely there, for much of the time there 
were no other missionaries. When the terrible 
Boxer crisis seemed to be passing her mission by, 
she wrote home to America, ‘I don’t think we 
are in danger, but even if we are we might as well 


[ 67 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


die suddenly in God’s work as by some long- 
drawn-out illness at home.’ Which shows what 
stuff she was made of! 

“ After seven years she came home to Amer- 
ica on furlough, speaking in many, many 
churches about China until she raised $1,000 to 
build a chapel in Lien-chou. And you would have 
said that she ought to have a long life of useful- 
ness ahead of her. Yet the very next year there 
was a curious misunderstanding about some re- 
ligious festival in Lien-chou, and the Chinese in 
that town became a furious mob, seizing the mis- 
sion, burning all the buildings, murdering all the 
missionaries, two of whom were a young married 
couple who had arrived only the day before. 

“Can you picture that scene? Our little Dr. 
Eleanor Chestnut with all the ills of the town 
resting on her shoulders, with all the plans for 
the future forming in her head! But what does 
that mob care for plans? See, they are rushing 
her down to the temple steps at the foot of a very 
large tree. There she sits, waiting her turn to 
die, with ten thousand confused thoughts swing- 
ing through her mind. And then, out of the ten 
thousand confused thoughts, one thought—a lit- 
tle boy! A little boy in that seething mob! A 


[ 68 ] 


HANDS ACROSS THE SEA 


little boy with an ugly gash in his head! And she 
alone in all that town knew how to heal him. 

“Oh, not a moment to lose now! See, she calls 
him over, she tears off the hem of her dress, she 
cleans the wound as best she can, she binds it 
up with skilled, kind fingers, and none too soon, 
for see! the mob is striking her—they throw her 
into the river—she lies there as if asleep—but 
they stab her—and stab her. Yet Eleanor Chest- 
nut is not dead to me, for in every touch I have 
ever put on the head of a Chinese boy I feel in my 
own clumsy fingers the sudden gentleness of 
Eleanor Chestnut’s touch on the head of that 
other boy. It has seemed to me that her sacrifice 
must not be in vain! 

“ Occasionally I tell my little blue-cotton pupils 
about her. They nod their Chinese heads so ear- 
nestly, their lovely Chinese eyes glow through 
their tears. ‘The hands of Eleanor Chestnut’ is 
a term we often use in dealing with our girls. 
For you know they, too, must often suffer perse- 
cution, especially when they speak at home about 
becoming Christians. Often whipped! Often 
starved! Often turned out-of-doors and dis- 
owned! So the story means something very real 
indeed to them. ‘The hands of Eleanor Chest- 


[ 69 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


nut ’ on the head of a little boy, a little boy in the 
mob when the mob was at its wildest. It seems 
to me that the Saviour Himself has written of 
her hands in His special book of remembrance.” 

Cynthia looked down at her own hands, 
skeptically; slim hands—young hands—untried 
hands. She slid them hastily between the hands 
of the Plain Gray Lady: “ Won’t you pray that 
my hands will be some good 1n China? ” 

“** Establish Thou the work of our hands, O 
Lord, yea, the work of our hands establish Thou 
it,’ ’’ was all the Plain Gray Lady said. 

But that night, on deck, as Cynthia sat in a 
patch of silver moonlight, thinking, she suddenly 
realized with great surprise that there would be 
little boys and girls in China who would never 
feel the Saviour’s hands placed on their heads 
unless they felt her hands; and she quoted: 


Christ has no hands but our hands 
To do His work today ; 

He has no feet but our feet 
To lead men in His way; 

He has no tongues but our tongues 
To tell men how He died; 

He has no help but our help 
To bring them to His side. 


[70 ] 


HANDS ACROSS THE SEA 


“‘Oh, it seems to me that I really can’t wait to 
get there and begin,” said Cynthia, looking out 
over the silver waves toward the place where 
China lay. And just then the ship’s bell sounded 
several times, while a sailor’s voice from some- 
where high up called down: 

** All’s well! ” 


[71] 








A Boat-With-An-Eye can be made from a piece of brown card- 
board, a square brown box, and a small piece of tan matting or 
- grass cloth. Draw a side view of the junk as shown here, with a 
high poop at the rear. From the cardboard cut the two sides 
of the boat; paste the square brown box between these two sides 
in the rear, for the poop; let the matting curve over the top. Sew 
the prows together firmly, but the keel very loosely so that the 
stitches hold the sides at least two inches apart along the bottom. 
Lay a piece of brown cardboard across these stitches. Paste an 
empty spool on this bottom, and in the spool insert a skewer 
for a mast. A piece of yellowish paper, curved and mock-fluted, 
may form the square sail. Blue crépe-paper will make an ideal 
river, with twigs and pebbles for the banks. 


minmtetth 
LAT ALI LS DD 


b 


“ When you travel by boat be prepared for a ducking.” 


“One foot cannot stand in two boats.” 


“When he cheats up to heaven in the price asked, you come 
down to earth in the price you offer.” 


VI 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH- 
AN-EYE 


- Tue Pacific Ocean does not last forever, of 
course; and there came a day of hustle and bustle 
on deck when everybody rushed to the railing 
and, pointing rudely with forefingers, made what 
is called in grammar a simple declarative sen- 
tence: “J see land!” You would have supposed 
that they had made it, or at least discovered it 
quite by themselves, a la Mr. Marco Polo; instead 
of which the captain knew it by heart and had 
known it for years and years—knew the way the 
yellow-brown water of the Yangtze came into the 
blue ocean, knew the picturesque old junks with 
square brown sails patched in many colors, knew 
the quaint sampans full of yellow-faced families 
who thought it worth their while to play tag be- 
side the monster boat hoping some one on the 
deck would throw down pennies. For some one 
always did! How could you resist that toothless 
old creature who held up her pole with a net on 
the end as she croaked in a perpetual torrent: 


[75] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“ Hello, money! Hello, money! Hello, money! 
Hello, money! ” 

“ Like a coffee-mill! ” sighed Cynthia. 

“ Or acracked Victrola record which some one 
forgets to shut off!” the Plain Gray Lady said 
sadly, for the old woman was much too old to be 
out in a leaky boat all day long. 

Cynthia had never felt so thrilled. It is true 
that she had known from the beginning about 
coming to China; but there is land that you come 
to—and leave; and land that you come to—and 
keep. And of course it made all the difference 
in the world! 

Later on, when she stood on dry land, she felt 
less as if she owned China like a possession in her 
coat-pocket. “I’m beginning to feel insignificant 
all over again. For this is a real city, and a real 
hotel, and a real trolley-car, and a real telegraph 
office across the street. This isn’t a heathen 
country!” 

“Isn’t it?’ smiled the Plain Gray Lady. 
“And yet I remember hearing of a dying man 
who fell down on the street from sheer weakness 
one day while a voice yelled from a window above 
him: ‘Get up! You are not allowed to die oppo- 
site the Telegraph Office, as it is a government 


[ 76 ] 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


building!’ That’s because the person on whose 
doorstep a man dies is obliged to buy the coffin! ” 

“Dear me!” Cynthia exclaimed. “ Perhaps 
it is a heathen country after all.” 

“ Especially heathen out where I live,” boasted 
the little missionary in mock pride. ‘“ We’re too 
awful out there! The only autos are men’s backs 
and arms, the only lights are kerosene-lamps, and 
as for telegrams $f 

Cynthia squared her shoulders: “ You can’t 
scare me, I shall love it. All my life I’ve wanted 
to be a pioneer-grandmother sort of person, like 
my own ancestors who went West in prairie 
schooners and grappled with poverty and Injuns 
and forest wildernesses. I know I look frivolous, 
but I’ve worked up a lovely state of adventure- 
someness down under my goldy hair and my 
pinky cheeks.” 

“You'll do!” smiled the older lady con- 
tentedly; and they set out to buy matches and 
canned goods and all the myriad things which 
would be needed through the year. Cynthia was 
fascinated by the shops, but shocked at the way 
her Plain Gray Saint bargained with the polite 
merchants who lauded their “ very-much hand- 
some pots and pans ”’; “ Lady, I give you it—ata 


[77] 








A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





cheapness! One dollar! Take it home! It is 
yours! ” only to have this little customer sniff dis- 
dainfully: 

“One dollar? Not worth it. Twenty cents, 
perhaps.” 

“ Alas, what pain to hear such sums, Excel- 
lency. Sixty cents, then. Sixty cents.” 

“No,” said the little saint firmly, “ twenty-five 
cents.” 

“Cannot do!” wailed the merchant. “Too 
much empty stomachs under the rooftree. Must 
fill with rice. Twenty-five cents, cannot do. 
Forty, maybe? ” 

“No,” said the lady, and walked out of the 
shop with Cynthia trailing miserably behind, 
worrying about those little empty stomachs. 
Presently there was the clatter-patter of straw 
sandals; the merchant had arrived, the pot held 
out in his hands like a gift: “ Thirty cents?” he 
smiled anxiously. 

“Thirty cents,” agreed the lady, tucking it 
under her arm. 

Cynthia was amazed. ‘Were you both 
Cragvien 

“No, one of us was Chinese. They always 
haggle over the price. It is quite the thing to do. 


[78 ] 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


No one ever pays the first price asked. I knew all 
along that I would get it for thirty cents, for 
that’s the proper price, but I had to start lower 
so that as he came down from a dollar I could 
mount up to thirty cents. Otherwise he might 
“lose face.’ And nothing is more unthinkable 
than that. It means lose your dignity, really. 
Of course I usually talk Chinese and can get bet- 
ter bargains than when I speak English for the 
benefit of a little green China Shepherdess.” 

“Don’t mind me!” Cynthia begged, and 
counted the days until they started off in the boat 
which was to take them along their special river. 
Many times Cynthia longed for extra eyes to see 
the curious sights along the shore, and life grew 
even more exciting when the day came to change 
into a little house-boat with its raised afterdeck 
and its bright blue eye painted on the bow. 

“Why the eye? ” asked Cynthia. 

“To see with, of course!” the Plain Gray 
Lady explained. ‘“ You see, there’s a goddess of 
sailors called Ma-Cu. With her two faithful at- 
tendants, ‘ Thousand-Mile Eye’ and ‘ Favoring- 
Wind Ear,’ she’s supposed to be ready for any 
emergency, but it’s necessary for Thousand-Mile 
Eye to see, so every devout sailor protects his 


[79 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


boat with an eye on the bow. And almost any 
day you can hear Favoring-Wind Ear appealed 
to by encouraging little whistles if the sailors 
need a breeze. Listen this very minute, my 
dearly: 

Cynthia listened to the sailors whistling for the 
wind. “I’m in China!” she whispered to her- 
self. “And it’s a very heathen place, but oh! 
so beautiful! Look at those banks—like giant 
patchwork quilts made up of little farms: there a 
brown field, there a green, here a yellow field, and 
there more greens.” 

Inside the Boat With The Bright Blue Eye 
was a most amusing little affair, as Cynthia 
wrote home: 


“BEST FAMILY ON EARTH: 


“ It’s a nice little boat, even if it has got a black 
and blue eye. It’s also got the funniest insides, 
all divided up into things that look like comical 
coal-bins; life on board is one continual obstacle 
race, for we are forced to climb over the parti- 
tions from bin to bin to reach our own pigeon- 
holes. I think hard before I leave my small 
corner, to be sure that I have everything I can 
possibly need for hours to come. Even then I 


[ 80 ] 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


often remember cherished possessions left too far 
behind me. But this especially when pirates come 
on board. 

“Tt was a great mistake about the pirates. 
Missionaries don’t generally have them. The 
Plain Gray Lady insists that she has gone up and 
down this river for twenty years and never once 
been pirated. Never once! Bandits on land? 
Oh, yes! Robbers in the front door? Yes, some- 
times! Thieves in the back door? Mercy, yes! 
But not a single pirate. I do bring out the best 
in folks somehow; even pirates are less bashful. 
You will want to hear details. 

“ Well, it was sunset-time and I was quoting 
silent poetry to myself on deck. I never saw a 
sun so pink or a sky so peacocky with gorgeous 
blues and golds and greens and oranges. More- 
over the whole river was a broad band of gold- 
and-scarlet ribbon, with the hilltops purple. So 
many colors at once made it seem as if I had 
fallen into an artists’ palette by mistake. Or 
should I say like falling into a pirate, by mistake? 
For all of a sudden there he was. And there I 
was. 

* Now the only Chinese I know so far is chop- 
chop. It means ‘ quickly ’ and I learned it on the 


[81 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


ocean from a missionary. Since it was the only 
word I knew, I called it very clear and loud to 
the peacocky sunset. One little fat pink cloud 
split in half with amusement. I began to won- 
der if chop-chop was another dialect from my 
new one (which I haven’t learned yet). But 
nevertheless I repeated it much louder than be- 
fore, chop-chop! 

“Then came that blessed American voice from 
an inside bin calling: ‘ Is it some joke, dearest?’ 

“*No, I think it’s a pirate! Chop-chop!’ I 
shouted at the top of my lungs, wondering where 
in the world all the stupid sailors could be. And 
then, plump! down came a thud over my entire 
face as the pirate laid his big flat palm from fore- 
head to chin. I thought that he had certainly 
ruined my dear little nose forever, but I did not 
worry about such trifles for the pirate was tying 
my hands behind me and laying me out flat on the 
deck looking up at a little startled new moon. 

“There wasn’t a sound from anybody for a 
thousand years. Nota sailor whispered to Miss 
Favoring-Wind Ear. Not a Plain Gray Lady 
called from her bin. Just the Pirate and I, and 
the moon, and the peacocky sky were left in the 
world. I was very unhappy. So was the darling 


[ 82] 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


new moon. He pulled a cloud over his face in 
order not to feel so sorry for any little shep- 
herdess who had to stop before she had even 
begun. 

“Presently the Pirate rolled me over with his 
foot and tried to get my wrist-watch off. The 
ribbon fits very snugly, as you know, and he could 
not work it down over my wrist. Neither did he 
understand how to unclasp it; and I being so re- 
clined, was not inclined to help him. I felt so 
flat! My hands were so backward! I know now 
what the Chinese mean by ‘ losing face.’ 

“ Well, a thousand more years passed by. The 
pirate rolled me over again, and I was sorry to 
see the peacock sky turning blue on top, and 
darker. I began to feel a bit chilly. Little stars 
came out and winked at me as if it were a huge 
joke. I began thinking how thrilling it would all 
be in the movies. I began wishing somebody 
could see me—somebody with a lasso: William 5. 
Hart or Tom Mix or ‘ Doug.’ Then IJ began 
wishing for you; you would have been so startled 
and frightened to see me, dear family! I think 
it was about this time that I cried a little and 
thought of Hudson Taylor. What would he have 
done? Pray, of course. Sol prayed, too. But I 


[ 83 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


wondered how I could possibly be saved on that 
lonely river 

“ Just then Pirate Number Two loomed on the 
scene. He had a disk in his hand. He was 
smacking his lips in the most cat-that-swallowed- 
the-canary-fashion. His lips were simply drip- 
ping; the way he licked them was awful. 

“My own Pirate leaned over and snapped off 
part of the disk greedily. He smacked his lips 
noisily, also, and something juicy red ran down 
his chin, falling plop! on my cheek. 

“Look out there! You'll spot my dress!’ I 
warned him. And then the dreadful absurdity 
of it struck me: this was no picnic supper, these 
were pirates. This wasn’t play-acting, this was 
a desperate occasion. Maybe I wouldn’t be need- 
ing any dress tomorrow—oh, what an end to a 
new China Shepherdess! And then of course I 
started to cry; but would you believe it, dear 
family, I immediately started to laugh. 

“For imagine it, I had been bossing pirates! 
I! All to save my third-best jersey dress—I 
laughed and laughed and laughed. Although 
down underneath the dress I wasn’t at all amused 
over it. 

“ But the Pirates were. They stopped eating 


[ 84 ] 





PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


Pirate Pie and looked down at me suspiciously 
and then approvingly. They said something ex- 
ceedingly Chinese to each other. They gave a 
slow smile. Then my special Pirate stooped over 
and stuffed a chunk of Pirate Pie between my 
lips. I almost choked on it until I found that it 
was—yes, actually, it was one of the pies the 
Presbyterian missionary had yiven us on the 
little river steamer. She had been making a half- 
day’s trip up-river to see her married daughter, 
and she had said a pie might add a little tang to 
our monotonous river diet! It certainly had! I 
chewed it as best I could, and the Pirates seemed 
amused to see the juiciness roll down my chin. 
“And then, just as the moon and the stars 
were beginning to be all the light there was, a 
strange thing happened. Music! The Pirates 
jumped at least a foot high: ‘What dreadful 
magic is this?’ they seemed to be asking. You 
never heard music so very saucy and carefree: 


Yes, we have no bananas, 
We have no bananas today. 


You know the way it sounds at home in Amer- 
ica? Well, all I’ve got to say is that it sounds 
even more soin China. Onariver! At night! 


[85 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“The Pirates were evidently frightened stiff. 
When they finally dared to move they put their 
heads together and whispered frantically. Then 
I had an inspiration: ‘ Chop-chop!’ I yelled. 

“They took the hint! They took it by diving 
over the side of this haunted boat so very chop- 
chop that the whole ark almost tipped over. I 
could hear them splashing as they swam away. I 
wanted to cry with relief, but how could I when 
that silliest song ever invented was still bawling 
about bananas—bananas—bananas. 

“T tried very hard to squirm out of my band- 
ages, I rolled east and west in order to loosen 
them, and suddenly I seemed to roll right on top 
of a voice at my very ear whispering, “ Where 
are they?’ 

“My blood ran cold once more, for it was such - 
a ghostly little disembodied affair, coming from 
nobody in particular. But then of course I real- 
ized that it was somebody very particular. “Is 
it you, little Plain Gray Lady?’ I whispered back. 

““* Who else in the crew speaks English?’ she 
said. ‘ Where are those men?’ 

“*T think they’re gone elsewhere to shop for 
bananas. Could you please untie my hands for 
me? Or else help me to get up on my feet. And 


[ 86 ] 


PIRATE PIE AND THE-BOAT-WITH-AN-EYE 


what happened to you? And where in the world 
are the crew?’ 

“ Ah, yes, the crew! You never in your life 
saw men tied round and round with so many 
ropes. The most whistling of all our sailors had 
a broken ankle from the rough treatment. I wish 
you could have seen my Plain Gray Wonder set it. 

“Are you a doctor?’ I asked, as she seemed 
to click a bone into place and bind her splints 
(two wooden ladles!) like a veteran. 

“Mercy no!’ she cried. ‘ But of course in 
twenty years in a walled town without a doctor 
I’ve had to pick up a lot of practical first aid.’ 

“* Such as starting up a Victrola to be “ rough 
on pirates ” so that they will die outdoors. It was 
too delicious! How did you happen to think of it?’ 

“* Well, I prayed. At first it seemed all I 
could do, I was so tightly tied. Then I managed 
to use my hands, fortunately they were tied in 
front of me which was a great help, but my ankles 
were lashed together so that I could not possibly 
climb a partition to reach you. I never was so 
anxious. And then the thought of music came 
like an inspiration. Sunset-time is a superstitious 
moment to most of these ignorant Chinese, and 
my little Victrola’s tone of voice is like nothing 


[ 87 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


human, since its drenching the other day. I 
imagine the poor men thought they had fallen 
into a nest of evil spirits. You will notice that 
they left all their bundles of booty behind them. 
God has been very good to us, my dear.’ 

“T took her in my arms. My own little Plain 
Gray Heroine! ‘Tell me the verse you like 
best?’ I asked. 

“*Lo, I am with you always, even to the end 
of the world,’ she quoted quietly. ‘ You know, 
Cynthia, it’s written specially for persons like 
ourselves, because it’s the latter half of a grand 
sentence. The first half tells us to go into all the 
world, so if I keep my half of it the Saviour keeps 
his half; and I’m really the safest woman in 
China!’ 

“So now you know, belovedests, that I’m liv- 
ing with A Friend of God; an Unafraid Mortal. 
I wouldn’t have missed the Pirates for anything, 
although I am glad that we leave the blue-eyed 
boat tomorrow for a short overland trip in sedan- 
chairs. 

“Aren’t Ia thrilling sister, Bobbie? And you 
dear little sisters? 


* Your own devoted 
§'CyNG 


[ 88 ] 





You will see how easily a sedan-chair can be made from a 
square box with two windows cut in each side and an entrance 
opening in front, meat skewers or knitting-needles or twigs for 
the handles. The bearers may be duplicates of the pedler drawn 
-in Chapter XVIII. 

A novel string of firecrackers can be made with little squares 
of bright red paper. Write on each something about the Chinese © 
language—e. g. what a roof with a pig under it represents; or, 
a woman under a broom; or, that ma means cat; ma means 
grandmother, etc; or, that to learn Chinese takes lungs of steel, 
patience of Job, etc. Thread a needle with heavy white thread; 
roll each red paper into a scroll, firecracker size, and sew the 
raw edge of the paper to the scroll with one big invisible stitch, 
the knot showing at one end of the firecracker and the loose end 
of the thread forming the fuse at the other end. “ Explode” 
these by pulling them open and reading aloud how poor Cynthia 
poll-parroted Chinese. 


mim rite tM 


“ A gem is not polished without rubbing nor a man perfected 
without trials.” 


“To see it once is better than to read about it a thousand 
times.” 


“ When heaven rears a man he grows very fat; when men rear 
one he is but skin and bones.” 


Vil 
POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


- No, Polly decidedly did not want a cracker! 
She clapped her hands over her dear little pink 
ears, shut her violet-gray eyes, and screwed up 
her forehead into a regular bow-knot of terror; 
all of which shows you what a very green Polly 
she was. For of course nothing is so polite in 
_ China as to “say it with firecrackers,” and it 
was the most natural thing in the world on the 
day when the Plain Gray Lady came back to town 
for many of the population to turn out to meet 
her sedan-chair and make a glorious racket. For 
this, that was lost, was found! This, that had 
gone over the ocean, had come back again! 
There were no firecrackers too big or too noisy 
to say “ Welcome to our city.” 

“This must be the Fourth of July!” thought 
the poor unimportant Polly as her sedan-chair 
followed second in the procession. But of course 
she remembered at once that not only was the 
date not July, but also there was no especial rea- 
son why the Chinese should celebrate American 


[91 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 
Independence Day. Therefore this must be in 
honor of the little lady in the front chair, for the 
farther the procession traveled the noisier the 
people, until finally as the chair-bearers set down 
their burdens before a certain gateway the racket 
became truly terrific. 

The Plain Gray Lady stepped out of her chair. 
More firecrackers! Polly stepped out of her 
chair! Other firecrackers! Her hands flew up 
to cover her ears. 

“ You went away one, and you come back two,” 
some one called to the Plain Gray Lady pointing 
to Polly. “Is this outside-country person going 
to stay?” 

“Yes, she will stay,” smiled the little lady, con- 
tentedly hooking her arm through Cynthia’s— 
for I think you have probably guessed who 
“Polly ” was. Although you can hardly know 
why she earned her fourth nickname; but Polly 
knew only too well. As she wrote to her family: 


“ My Own HomeE-SwEEtT-HoMeE Fo.Lks: 


“Tam nothing these days but the greenest of 
green poll-parrots. Somebody says a word to 
me, and I say it back at them. Over and over and 
over until I’m dizzy with the sound! And it 


[92 ] 


POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


matters how I say it. It matters awfully! If I 
say Moung with an upward inflection it means 
the verb ‘ to ask,’ if I say Moung emphatically, it 
means “ door.’ And would you believe it? but a 
man on the steamer told me that the little two- 
letter Ma has exactly seven meanings according 
to the way you intone it. Seven, just fancy! It 
can mean cat,’ ‘ horse,’ © goat,’ ‘ grandmother,’ 
‘cannot,’ ‘ scold,’ or ‘oatmeal.’ It just depends 
how you say it! But isn’t it simply horrible to 
feel that at any moment I might forget and call 
a grandmother a goat, or, at best, a cat, unless I 
can bear in mind that granny must have a low 
tone while pussy needs a high one as if I were 
about to pick a quarrel. 

* My beloved Plain Gray Lady has gotten mea 
suitable teacher, the gentlest, meekest man in 
China I am sure; he shakes his own hands when 
he comes into the room and bows so politely at 
every remark he makes that we both resemble 
rocking-horses. He thanks me when I do well 
and begs my pardon when I make a mistake. 
Needless to say he is always asking it! 

“ The spoken language, you far-away dears, is 
one thing, a mountain of a task; but the written 
language, alas! is a whole mountain range; for 


[93 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


it has no regular alphabet but is made up of pic- 
ture symbols called ‘characters’ which repre- 
sent words. For instance, peace has the com- 
pound character of woman and roof: the woman 
under a roof. My Plain Gray Darling tells me 
with twinkles in her anything-but-plain-gray eyes 
that the Chinese think there is no peace if the 
lady isn’t kept indoors! 

“Good is represented by the characte of a 
woman and son, since the gods bless every good 
Chinese mother with a-boy. 

“Quarrel, alas! alas! is represented by the 
character for two women, undoubtedly because— 
like those in the U. S. A.—their tongues are 
prone to pick one! 

“ Home is represented by a pig under a roof, 
because a pig is a valuable critter with right of 
way. 

“Wife is represented by the character for 
‘woman’ standing under ‘broom.’ My Plain 
Gray Lady tells me sadly that not only must the 
Chinese daughter-in-law sweep clean and sweep 
often, but if she does her duty badly the broom 
comes down bang! on her poor little back. 

“Says my teacher to me: ‘When you have 
heart to the left and blood to the right, the char- 


[ 94 ] 


POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


acter means to pity; but when you have heart on 
one side and star on the other it means to wake 
up. When there is hand on one side and foot on 
the other, it means to take hold. When water is 
on one side and stand up is on the other, the char- 
acter means to cry. When grass is on top and 
name is down below, it means tea. Have you 
honorably got it?’ 

“Multiply all this picture language by five 
thousand and all the spoken language by another 
five thousand (for that is the very fewest one can 
live on!) and you will understand why Mr. Milne 
said to Robert Morrison: ‘ To learn Chinese is a 
work for men with bodies of brass, lung's of steel, 
heads of oak, and eyes of eagles, hearts of apos- 
tles, memories of angels, the patience of Job, and 
the years of Methusaleh.’ 

“ Knowing your Cynthia as you do, the ques- 
tion is, Do I qualify? I’m wondering seriously! 
In any case I’m nothing but a green poll-parrot 
all day long, imitating my meek little teacher. I 
eat, poll-parrot, and go to bed. I even poll-parrot 
abominably in my sleep. Then I get up, eat, poll- 
parrot, and tumble wearily into bed again. I feel 
paralyzed sometimes to think of the conversa- 
tional breaks I may make all my life, just as regu- 


[95 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


lar poll-parrots often do when they squawk 
‘Thief!’ at the preacher and ‘ Kiss me, darling!’ 
to the plumber. 

“T haven’t told you a thing about the Plain 
Gray Lady’s house. I shall never forget my first 
impression of it as arm-in-arm she led me into 
it with firecrackers to right of us, firecrackers to 
left of us volleying and thundering. ‘ Nobly we 
walked and well’ right through a front door like 
anybody’s front door, into a hall like anybody’s 
hall, into a small plain parlor like anybody’s par- 
lor. It was just every-day America planted right 
here in the heart of China. But my little Plain 
Gray Lady is by no means one of the anybodies 
or the everybodies! She’s Somebody! Lovelier 
and sweeter and frailer and gray-eyed-er than I 
had supposed. 

““She’s made this place too dear. Flowers? 
Oh, my! Everywhere. If she sticks an umbrella 
in the ground it roots, grows up, and blooms. 
Think of me, my own self—the most parasol of 
mortals outwardly, yet she’s planted me already, 
and every day I keep pulling myself up to see how 
I’m taking root. My very first day she said to 
me: ‘ Now while your teacher is an excellent man, 
he is not a Christian. Don’t forget for a moment 


[ 96 ] 





POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


that while you are imitating his Chinese it will 
be a remarkable chance for him to begin imitat- 
ing your Christianity.’ 

“It has given me my one bright spot in lan- 
guage work, I assure you. And one day when I 
said I feared I would not be much use when 
school opens she said in her calm little fashion: ‘ I 
thought maybe you could sit in your room, dear- 
est, just at certain hours. It could be a prayer- 
room where the girls could come if they wanted 
to. Forthey docome! I’ve always had my room 
_a place like that where I sat calmly at certain 
times each day, but of course I have had to steal 
those hours from other duties. It will be the 
greatest blessing to have you take this over! A 
little Christian weather-breeder, dear, a Chris- 
tian atmosphere-maker.’ 

“Did you ever know such a refreshing crea- 
ture? She seems to wash the face of every morn- 
ing for me, so that I start afresh. 

“Oh dear!’ I wail, like Mr. Shakespeare’s 
funny little schoolboy who crept like a snail un- 
willingly to school, ‘ now I’ve got to go and poll- 
parrot all morning.’ 

“* What of it?’ she cries. ‘Think how soon 
you'll be skylarking all over town.’ 


[97 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“Yesterday we went to see an old lady living 
in a mud-puddle. The puddle was a mistake! 
For there had been heavy rains, and the river had 
come indoors from one side while the brook had 
come in from another, and the very heavens had 
come in through the leaky roof. The old lady 
was very grumbly and mumbly and helpless. She 
scolded everybody in sight. She scolded me, and 
I think she even scolded my little Plain Gray 
Lady. It certainly sounded like scolding. But 
my Plain Gray One beamed on her, and lo! the 
warmth of that smile began drying up the pud- 
dles. Really! 

“For quite energetically she moved the old 
lady’s chair out of the puddles, she showed Mrs. 
Lazy Daughter-in-law how to dig a clever ditch 
so that the puddles could be persuaded to run out- 
doors in channels. After a half-hour of irriga- 
tion enterprises life seemed more bearable for the 
old lady, whereupon presents from America were 
presented to the entire family. You should have 
seen their faces as they untied the strings and 
held up—well, what were the things anyhow? It 
was plain to be seen that nobody knew. They 
giggled a little, like children on Christmas morn- 
ing when the suspense is thickest. 


[98 ] 


POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


“Then the Plain Gray Lady demonstrated 
what handkerchiefs are for. The whole family 
took to nosewiping. One small boy had such a 
little button of a nose that I feared it would be 
wiped entirely away. But it emerged very, very 
pink and shining, his little slant eyes actually 
crossing as he tried in vain to see the pink button 
—before and after. The most flattering remarks 
were delivered to the donor by all parties con- 
cerned. Bowing in a polite row they begged us 
to ‘Go slowly! Go slowly!’ when we took our 
departure. 

“* And now I shan’t mind going there quite so 
much,’ said my Plain Gray Saint, cheerfully. 
‘You see, it’s far pleasanter when people have 
handkerchiefs. But that family has been much 
too poor for such extravagances. They have had 
too much trouble in their house lately to think of 
indulging themselves.’ 

“*FHfouse?’ I asked. ‘That isn’t a house, 
that’s a shanty! Think of the mud—think of 
those pecking chickens—those yapping dogs—no 
windows, just leaks in the roof. Why do they 
plant their house right where the brook and the 
river meet, anyhow?’ 

“* Feng Shui, she answered. 


[99 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


66 


‘T haven’t poll-parroted those words into my 
memory yet, darling lady, have I?’ 

“*Probably not! The combination means 
“wind-water,” or really the Science of Luck. 
It’s such a delicate science that China is full of 
special luck doctors to tell you on what day Feng 
Shui will give you good fortune in marrying, in 
buying, in selling, in having a funeral. Every- 
body has his or her special Feng Shui, so that it 
would be a cruel neighbor who would move a 
pebble from the front yard or break a twig on the 
property—Feng Shui might be disturbed! And 
sometimes a neighbor’s chimney spoils the luck 
of the family next door. The family we just 
visited used to live next door to my school. But 
the Christian singing spoiled their luck. We had 
really terrible arguments over it. They pasted 
charm-papers all around their premises. They 
put a little tin policeman on their roof to shoot 
the evil spirits, but I was too much for them. 
They had to leave! And Feng Shui has treated 
them no better in their new home than before. 
That’s what the old lady was scolding me about— 
that little boy’s father and mother both died while 
I was away last year; she says the spirits of the 
new location are against the whole family. 


[ 100 } 


POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


“Look at these mud-puddles, for instance? ”’ she 
said.’ 

“T said for the hundredth time, ‘ This is 
China!’ adding, ‘Is there a reason why all the 
roofs tip up at the corners?’ 

“* There is! For the lower air is full of evil 
spirits. These spirits are stupid little things, 
they can only travel in straight lines-—that’s the 
reason for our crooked streets and crooked lanes. 
It’s also the reason why no two doors in a Chinese 
house are ever opposite each other, for woe betide 
the person passing between if an evil spirit was 
en route from door to door! He would be in- 
stantly sick, or instantly have bad luck in busi- 
ness. So there’s a special devil screen before 
each heathen front door in town. And a fasci- 
nating curved roof is really a spiritual shoot-the- 
chute, for if an evil spirit comes dashing down 
to enter the courtyard, zip! he strikes that up- 
turned cornice and is bounced off into the upper 
air.’ 

“You safe American youngsters, isn’t this a 
shame? A perfect shame? I remembered how 
that our Handkerchief Family had pieces of 
paper pasted on the outside of their chimney; 
were they charms, too? I asked. 


[101 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


““ Ves; little sign-posts, as it were, warning 
the evil spirits away. Indoors they had the char- 
acter for tiger painted on the chimney, for the 
mere mention of tigers gives demons a panic.’ 

“ By this time we had come to the little hill just 
outside the gates and were looking down on the 
roofs of the walled city—tiled in blue-gray, blue- 
green, or red, or thatched, each with the inevi- 
table slant upward. 

“ “And only one story high, you notice,’ the 
Plain Gray Lady explained, ‘ for it is only Chris- 
tianity which adds a second story to a man’s 
house. I think that’s true all over the world. 
And it’s only Christianity that gives you and me 
the choice of being old maids, my dear! Sucha 
creature is unheard of in heathen communities. 
And wide streets are another Christian boon. 
Look how near together the roofs of those houses 
are!’ 

«Some day,’ I laughed, ‘I think that I will 
try walking all over town on the rooftops! ’ 

“*Please don’t, Poll-Parrot!’ groaned my 
older missionary. ‘Let me warn you that you 
are enough of an astonishment now. Didn’t you 
notice this afternoon how some of the children 
scampered away as we came nearer? ‘That’s 


[ 102 ] 


POLLY WANT A CRACKER? 


partly your hair but mostly the smelling-salt 
demons corked in that bottle of yours.’ 

“T flourished said bottle regretfully: ‘If I 
could only leave my nose at home! But I find the 
open sewers of your city very deadly, madam, 
not to mention little piles of garbage standing 
here and there. As for your million flies, I feel 
as if I were playing our old party game of Buzz. 
Mercy on us, just look at those cats in the tree!’ 

“My dears, they were the deadest of dead 
pussies, tied up there with a piece of yellow 
_charm-paper to ward off the cat demons! So 
now you know why I keep saying to myself a 
dozen times a day, ‘I am in China!’ Perhaps 
you are beginning to understand why I must 
learn Chinese chop-chop, for our school opens in 
a few months, and I.want to be 


“Your loving 


‘ CHINESE CHATTER-Box.” 


[ 103 ] 








For the family of Amazing Grace you will need three or four 
of the Chinese women and as many Chinese men, also plenty of 
children in smaller sizes made from the patterns given in Chap- 
ters IX and X. Stand all these dolls in a brave row facing a 
Boxer captain, one of the men dolls with a yellow girdle and 
yellow turban. (Yellow being the Manchu and also the Buddhist 
color, was adopted as the Boxer sign of leadership.) A chalk 
cross is drawn on the floor, but one by one, beginning with 
grandfather and ending with the baby, the members of the family 
refuse to trample on the cross and are stabbed by the Boxer’s 
sword. 

Each doll should be cut from two thicknesses of colored card- 
board; blue, purple, green, etc. Paste together the two heads 
and shoulders nearly to the waist, then spread the feet apart 
so that the figure may stand alone. Be sure to cut the soles of the 
feet flat, as indicated, otherwise the dolls cannot stand steadily. 
It is lots of fun to experiment with the face—four dashes, a dot, 
and an o will make eyes, nose, and mouth. Just practise in your 
spare moments. These are the dolls to use for other stories, too— 
when you want a Granny, or a mother, or a Deacon Ding. 


mui prize rt 
MAA TAS 


“Tf a man at home receives no visitors, when abroad he will 
have no host.” 


“Let every one sweep away the snow from his own door and 
not meddle with the hoar frost on his neighbor’s tiles.” 


“Marble is not less hard or less cold for being polished.” 


VIII 
iibe BES lh SELEERSINE AY GELLAR 


“ Topay,” said the China Shepherdess, “ I’d 
like to see the thrillingest, thankfullest place in 
town. You've shown me all the heathen spots, 
so could I please have a thriller? Of course I 
don’t want to get into actual danger, or get tan- 
gled up in the red tape of international diplo- 
macy Af 

“Exactly!” the Plain Gray Lady said soberly. 
“T think I will prescribe Amazing Grace. She’s 
in the next room.” 

Cynthia tiptoed to the door and took a good 
look. “ What a quaint little blue-cotton person! 
I feel better already.. But can she speak 
English? ” 

Amazing Grace simply beamed and beamed. 
“English are such a one un-easy talk to speak! ” 
she answered. “ Cannot do! But I do make a 
thank for you being in our school!” She bowed 
politely. 

The Plain Gray Lady stated Cynthia’s burning 
desire for a thrill—for something unusual. 


[ 107 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“‘ She make a urge for seeing the what-nobody- 
else-sees? Well now, should it be somethings for 
the honorably self to buy, or just somethings to 
making the eyes fluttering, or perhaps some- 
things to make merry the worshipful heart?” 
Amazing Grace knew human nature. 

Cynthia wanted to hug the little guide. “ All 
three, please! Couldn’t my eyes flutter while my 
heart makes merry?” 

“Can do!” beamed Amazing Grace. “It are 
just come into my head. Make a steppings after 
me, so you pleases.” 

They began a zigzag walk down crooked 
streets and narrow lanes; long gaudy shop signs 
flapped overhead, and wheelbarrows, sedan- 
chairs, and all sorts of pedlers jostled them at 
every step. Barbers were cutting their custom- 
ers’ hair right out in the street, bakers were bak- 
ing little cakes in portable ovens while you waited. 
Cynthia had a dozen curious sights to see, when 
suddenly Amazing Grace turned off into a 
gloomy muddy lane and entered a dark shadowy 
doorway. If Cynthia felt afraid to follow she 
did not care to show it, for Amazing Grace was 
dusting off a chair in the most matter-of-fact 
way and begging her to “ honorably sit.” 


[ 108 ] 


THE BEST SELLER IN A CELLAR 


For a dramatic moment she stared at her 
guest; then she began: “ You do please got to 
listen a story,” she begged, “a story of the family 
who are once lived in this here house. So big a 
family as you could not count on my two hands, 
with grandfather and uncles and childrens, nice 
little laughing childrens what are full of happy 
all days. You could to see them in this room as 
the honorably old man are prop his big horn 
glasses on his honorably nose and are make read- 
ings from the Christian Book of God. That was 
why they are got full of happy—see? ” 

Cynthia nodded. 

“Well, came a day. Celestial sun shining over 
the roof; grandmother sitting by the fireplace 
full of peace; mother cooking rice in the pot; little 
children full of happy; Da Ngen sweeping floor 
in the Christian’s way. Then tramp! tramp! 
tramp! came marchings in the street. ‘Ah me!’ 
sighed that mother, and are calling the childrens 
into her arms in fear. She are know what is. 
Then bang! bang came knockings on the door. 
‘Let us in!’ sounded yells without.” 

Amazing Grace moved to the door, swung it 
open dramatically and said: “‘ Honorably step! ” 
Cynthia had the uncanny feeling that shadowy 


[ 109 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


people were really stepping inside—people with 
an evil purpose. Then shutting the door, Amaz- 
ing Grace continued: 

“Five mens are step inside. Mens by the 
name of Boxers, and they are scowl with great 
fierceness all times. Then the captain are draw 
his sharp sword from the belt around him and are 
shout loud: ‘Speak up—are anybody in this 
house Christians?’ Well, the honorably grand- 
mother stand up to bow and say with proudness, 
‘Weare all that.” Then quicker than flashes the 
Boxer captain are wave his big sword: ‘ Stand in 
arow!’ heare shouting. So the family are stand 
in a row—honorably grandfather at one end, 
plump baby to the other end.” 

Amazing Grace showed the very spots where 
they had stood until Cynthia seemed to see every 
one of them: the dear old grandfather peering 
through the horn glasses propped on his nose, the 
trembling grandmother wondering what was the 
matter, the frightened uncles and aunts sum- 
moned from other rooms, the astonished chil- 
dren, the unconcerned baby, plump as a pin- 
cushion, in his padded jackets. Then with 
another dramatic swerve Amazing Grace pre- 
tended to be the Boxer captain. Leaning over, 


[110] 





THE BEST SELLER IN A CELLAR 





she drew the sign of the cross on the earthen floor 
with her finger. 

“ Fe are draw the cross this way with his glit- 
tering sword, and on it he are put the dear, dear 
Bible. Then he sneer: ‘Step on it, you Chris- 
tians, and I are saving your lives for you. Come 
on, stamp on it good and heavy, one by one!’ 
But no, the honorably grandfather, he are not 
make that steppings. As for the feeble grand- 
mother, no, no, not to save her poor white hairs 
would she put stampings on the dear Saviour’s 
Bible. And the uncles all shook their heads, no; 
also the aunts—no, no! Not on that honorably 
sign of the cross nor on that so precious Book. 
Then it are the turn of the little bits of children, 
so full of happy ten minutes ago, so full of scare 
now because of glittering swords. But no, they 
are not make any stampings on their onliest 
story-book; not the boys; not the girls. And not 
that littlest bit of plump baby either—he wobble 
his surprised little head. ‘No, no!’ he babble, 
just like every one else, although he are got no 
idea what it are all about.” 

Cynthia held her breath, and her heart beat 
painfully fast. “Oh!” she cried brokenly, 
“ surely—surely that dreadful Boxer didn’t dare 


[111] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


to kill them? Oh, Amazing Grace, not all of 
them? ” 

Amazing Grace nodded silently. “ Mostly all,” 
she said in a smothered voice, “‘ but there are 
great confusion arose. So many in the family, 
and only five Boxers, so Da Ngen are by the door 
and are slip through, snatching three of the little 
bits of childrens with her. Which are the way 
she did not see the awfulness, for there are queer 
cellar under this house, where grandfather mer- 
chant used for to hide his mostly precious mer- 
chandise. Only a big hole in the earth, but there 
Da Negen hide with the poor childrens. How 
shall I told it? How her heart was sore with 
heavy inside her; how all day she are crouch with 
the childrens inside her arm. Then when night 
came she are creep out to get foods—ah! I can- 
not speak what she saw.” 

Cynthia began crying as if her heart would 
break. “ Right in this very room?” she sobbed. 

“Yes,” answered Amazing Grace softly. 
“ But you are not rightly to cry, Miss Honorably 
Stranger, this are to put a thankful in your heart 
to know how the Lord God are got Chinese who 
love him so hard they are willingly to die with 
pains. There is only proudness for that family, 


[112] 


THE BEST SELLER IN A CELLAR 


when I tell you the beautiful endings. For Da 
Ngen are found the Bible in the ashes of the fire- 
place, so she are taking it down into the cellar 
and are hidden it safe. Boxers come snooping, 
but are got no sight of nobodies. One, two, three 
days pass, then Da Ngen venture out to get foods 
for empty stomachs; four, five, six more days, 
out again for more foods. And so on, weeks on 
end. Then danger are over, and neighbors are 
make discover of starving childrens. Surprises 
are no word for them. My! My!” 

Cynthia broke in impatiently, “Then what 
happened? ” 

Amazing Grace said beseechingly: “ I like you 
should understand properly how Da Ngen are 
earn money for feedings those childrens. This 
way: those heathen neighbors are full of curious. 
They wags their polite heads but cannot under- 
stood how Christians will die instead of stamp- 
ings on Bible. So they do got desires for touch- 
ing that Book with their curious hands and for 
reading it with curious eyes. Well, Da Ngen she 
do charge so many bits of cash for climbing down 
in cellar to reading her Bible saved from ashes. 
Are it give you a painfully shock? ” 

“No, no! ” cried Cynthia, her eyes shining, “ I 


[113 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


think she was the pluckiest girl I ever heard of 
to manage to save those children and feed them. 
Where is she now, bless her heart? ” 

Amazing Grace squinted shyly at Cynthia. 
“Why, she are me!” she said bashfully, “Da 
Ngen are my Christian name, which means Big 
Grace, or Amazing Grace, as the Miss Heavenly 
Teacher call me, when it are done over into 
American talk. As for the childrens, the brother 
are being minister in town, the sister married, 
while the little bit baby are all growed up into nice 
school-teacher. For those Boxers did come many 
year ago, what you call 1900, yes? ” 

Cynthia looked in astonishment at Amazing 
Grace. “ You’re too little and frail and young 
to have lived through such terrors, my dear. 
What do you do now? ” 

“There aren’t nothings to tell, I are just the 
same me. I help at the school. But I do got fine 
husband, who are selling Bibles every day. For 
ever since those Boxers, the Chinese are got a big 
curious for to own the Book what could make ten 
thousand men and women into brave martyrs. 
My husband, he are selling and selling and sell- 
ing that Bible all up and down the country. 
There are no book like it, it are the best seller 


[114] 


THE BEST SELLER IN A CELLAR 


over everything else. But for me, I are liking 
best the Bible in the cellar. Will you honorably 
step to see it?” 

As in a dream Cynthia followed Amazing 
Grace down into the dark, damp hole in the 
earthen floor. Their only light was a thread of 
flickering flame from a little taper, but it was 
enough for her to see the book which Amazing 
Grace thrust into her hands—a little ugly warped 
Bible, burned and tattered at the edges, its cover 
loose, many of its pages gone. But she looked at 
it passionately, then very reverently she clasped 
it against her heart. 

Afterward, alone in her room, she wrote out 
the story to send home to her family in time for 
Thanksgiving Day: “ For I think you'll like to 
hear about the thankfullest place I’ve ever seen 
on earth, and perhaps when you are returning 
thanks for Pilgrims and turkeys and cranberry 
sauce you will open your Bibles at Daniel I1 : 32 
and thank God all over again that even here in 
China ‘ The people who do know their God shall 
be strong and do exploits. ” 


[115] 





TO THE PLAIN GRAY LADY 


Mary, Mary, Missionary, 
How does your garden grow? 

With reading spells by dear Blue Belles 
And little maids all in a row! 





You will need a whole sheet of “old blue” cardboard to make 
your ten Blue Belles, since twenty dolls must be cut in order to 
make each Blue Belle from a pair of dolls by pasting together 
two heads and shoulders part way to the waist; for it will be the 
two sets of legs which will enable the Blue Belles to stand upright. 
Their feet, as you see, are unbound! Be sure to cut them very 
flat along the soles, as here indicated, for otherwise they cannot 
stand steadily. 

Cut ovals of tan wrapping-paper and paste on the blue card- 
board for faces. The flowers and head-bands may be of different 
colors for variety’s sake, and you will find it fun to print the 
names of the Blue Belles on their backs: Goody Two Shoes, 
George, Fragrant Gentility, Silver Dew Drop are a few of the 
girls about whom stories are told in this book. 


moi priate tt 
LATO AL Ith <> 7 


\@..@ 


“Out of an indigo vat you can’t draw white calico.” 


“One’s good deeds are known only at home; one’s bad deeds 
far away.” 


“Tf the root be neglected, what springs from it cannot be in 
good condition.” 


IX 
TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


THE Blue Belles tinkled because of their brace- 
lets and earrings and necklaces. It was tinkle- 
tinkle here, and tinkle-tinkle there, all day long 
wherever they went; and when the new pupils 
arrived (as arrive they did, in wheelbarrows, 
chairs, and on foot) it was hobble-hobble here, 
and hobble-hobble there, because their golden 
lilies were so tiny that they could not walk with 
anything but little mincing thumping steps— 
swaying like slender lilies; and if you are won- 
dering why Cynthia called them “ Blue Belles ” 
here’s her letter home describing them: 


“HONORABLE WEE SISTER, AND You, My G1to- 
RIOUS BROTHER, PRECIOUS SCHOOLGOERS, 
ALL: 


“Little you dream what it really means to go 
to school, you pampered little pencil-users, you 
experienced ink-slingers, you wealthy book- 
owners, you swift word-readers, you brilliant 
print-understanders, I never dreamed myself 


[119] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


how wealthy I had been in education until my 
Plain Gray Lady set me wise; for it seems that 
in China there are 70,000,000 children at this 
very moment old enough to go to school, but with 
schools large enough for 2,000,000 of them to 
attend. If you will put your subtractors to work 
on that problem you’ll soon get 68,000,000 blue- 
cotton-trousered left-over children who have to 
go on living school-less, book-less, read-less, 
write-less lives! 

“And that, of course, is quite too bad for 
every one in China, especially for the girls, since 
if anybody in a Chinese family is to be a school- 
goer, naturally the son is chosen. My Plain Gray 
Lady has, therefore, enlarged her school this 
year, and because my Chinese is still too ‘ un- 
easy ’ for me to do much else I’m to mother ten 
of the newest and bluest of the Blue Belles. Be- 
fore they arrived I went dashing here, there, and 
everywhere, fixing their. funny makeshift beds, 
which look for all the world like picnic tables at 
a fairground—just planks laid across wooden 
horses, with pieces of matting over the planks 
for the Blue Belles to lie on, and—blue-cotton 
quilts to cover them. 

““Dear me!’ I said. ‘ They’ll hate this! ’ 


[ 120 ] 


TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


“*Dear no!’ laughed my very wise lady, 
‘they'll love this! For they sleep on wood or 
bricks at home, and this will seem quite fine 
enough, certainly far better than being turned 
away from school as they were last year.’ Like 
the Scotchman, yesterday I would have said, ‘I 
hae me douts.’ But today, today! I know better. 

“ For the little tinkling lassies have arrived, all 
in their charming blue-cotton trousers, beaming 
and bowing. It’s quite delicious to see how they 
love the Plain Gray Lady and Amazing Grace. 
They brought them gifts from home—colored 
eges, melon-seeds, a bag of tea, an apple, beads. 
All very nice, indeed, but of course being an un- 
expected teacherette I would have had no gifts 
at all if one blue-trousered maiden had not sud- 
denly thrust into my hand an astonishingly liquid 
eift. 

“* Oh, thank you! Thank you!’ I gasped, 
then whispered to Amazing Grace, ‘ what is 1t?’ 

“ She wrinkled her nose in an amused smile: 
* Hair-oil!’ she chuckled. ‘ P’an-P’an do say 
how it make smooth the bad curl on your old-to- 
death hair!’ 

“* My old-to-death hair?’ I asked. 

“Very too much faded by venerably age,’ 


[ 121 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Amazing Grace explained, her dear round face 
all smile. 

“Oh, my American darlings! Fancy my feel- 
ings! For once upon a time a certain Harvard 
student wrote a lovely sonnet about my goldi- 
locks, and now—this! ‘ Old-to-death ’? 

“ But as I was saying, all has been excitement 
in our midst for two days, with the arrival of 
pupils, baggage, bundles, parents, and relatives 
even up to the third and fourth generation. 
These latter came escorting my ten special 
‘heathen’ Blue Belles who were all as blue as 
indigo, feeling like strangers in a strange land. 
Abandoned. Deserted. Left at the mercy of all 
sorts of evil spirits. They wept into their rice- 
bowls at supper, and wailed upon their chop- 
sticks and boo-hooed in all the dim corners. 

“*Exert your Bo-Peep charms,’ the Plain 
Gray Lady ordered: ‘ we’ve never been able to 
have such a large delegation of brand new girls 
all at one time.’ But before I had a chance to 
see if my charms had any power perfect shrieks 
and howls arose from the ten poor girls. 

“ “What is it now? What is it?’ 

“It seems that some of the older girls had told 
them that they too would have to have their feet 


[ 122 ] 


TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


unbound. One aristocratic little girl in a pea- 
cock-green suit screamed that she would go 
straight home before she’d become a common big- 
foot-person. Not she! Never! Another girl 
sobbed frantically that she couldn’t get home, she 
didn’t know how to get there alone, it was so far 
off, it took days of travel, ‘and if they make my 
feet big Pll never get a mother-in-law. Boo-hoo! 
Boo-hoo! What’s the use of filling my stomach 
full of knowledge if I never get a mother-in- 
law?’ 

“JT never dreamed that Amazing Grace could 
work such magic, but within an hour all ten of 
those weeping Blue Belles were rolled up like 
blue cocoons in their quilts, sleeping peacefully. 

“ Down-stairs, the three of us sat wearily. It 
had been our busiest day. My little Plain Gray 
Lady was telling God about it—I shall never for- 
get the end of her prayer: ‘ Father, it is such an 
honor that You trust us with these little girls. 
We know You don’t make heathen, only little— 
children. Give us such hands and hearts and 
voices that this little flock may see Who made us 
lovely! Give us such deeds, such thoughts, such 
words, that this little flock may follow where we 
lead. O make us shepherdesses indeed, that there 


[123 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


may be one fold, one flock, one Shepherd, on 
earth—in China!—as in heaven. For Jestis’ 
sake. Amen.’ 
“After such a prayer as that I went to bed the 
happiest girl in the world. Don’t you envy 
“Your own sister 


+B] 


Cyn. 


Cynthia had not supposed that such a large 
school could be taught by so few teachers, just 
the Plain Gray Lady, Amazing Grace, Beautiful 
Pearl (the sister of Amazing Grace), and Mr. 
Pepper. 

Mr. Pepper came from the city every morning, 
the most surprising and surprised man in town. 
Surprising to Cynthia because he was so tre- 
mendously solemn in his large goggles, his long 
blue gown, and his exceedingly long finger-nails. 
If ever a man was a scholar to his finger-tips it 
was Mr. Pepper, for like many other Chinese 
scholars of the old type he had never cut his 
finger-nails, he even wore slender silver shields 
on them to show that he was All Brain and never 
did any work with his hands. 

The Plain Gray Lady had to explain to Cyt 
thia why he seemed so perpetually surprised. It 
seems that when she engaged him as a teacher 


[ 124 ] 





TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 





he had supposed that of course he would teach 
boys, until a chance sentence showed him that the 
pupils were to be girls. 

“Tt is no use,” he said, wagging his head re- 
eretfully. ‘“ No use at all. Girls cannot learn.” 

“But they can! They will! They have! My 
school is full of bright girls. Perhaps you have 
been so busy reading the Chinese classics that 
you have not noticed my pupils. Or perhaps you 
have no children of your own? ”’ 

“Five mouths and one scholar,” he answered. 

“ What do you mean by that?” she had asked, 
surprised in her turn. 

“One son who can read, and five little less- 
than-nothing daughters,” he sighed. “Just 
mouths. Just stomachs. Little ‘lose-money- 
persons’! It’s bad business raising girls for 
other people, for when I get them a mother-in- 
law apiece they won’t belong to me any longer. 
A perfect waste of money.” 

The Plain Gray Lady argued with him. “I 
can make your daughters like sons! ” she boasted 
finally. 

“Excuse me! Pardon me!” said Mr. Pepper, 
looking deeply pained. ‘ But it was the great 
Sage himself [Confucius] who teaches that 


[125 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


“Women indeed are human beings, but they are 
of a lower order than men and can never attain 
to full equality with them’ He also said, ‘A 
stupid woman is less troublesome in the family 
than a wise one.” 

But Mr. Pepper, although so sad and so cer- 
tain, was finally persuaded to accept the post of 
writing teacher, and he even agreed to bring his 
five girl “mouths” with him each day. Very 
down-in-the-corner mouths they were, just at 
first, because all five little Peppers were quite sure 
that they could never get this thing called knowl- 
edge. 

But all of a sudden little Pearl Pepper began 
to feel wisdom buzzing inside her head! Cuinna- 
mon Flower felt it next; then little Miss Beauti- 
ful Peace came down with a real attack of enthu- 
siasm: “I can read! I know that character!” 

“Tut! Tut!” said Silver Moon loftily, “I 
also know it!” 

The fifth little Pepper drooped her lips: “TI 
must be very stupid! I can’t fix any of these 
great thoughts in my miserable stomach.” 

“T told you so!” warned Mr. Pepper. But of 
course he began to see that if four of the five 
could do it, Number Five might manage also. 


[ 126 ] 


TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 





And always he kept reminding himself of Grand- 
mother Gate-Woman. 

For of all secrets this was the most surprising 
in China. Old Grandmother Gate-Woman 
opened and closed the school gate. She was very, 
very old, and very, very poor, and very, very 
cross. Like Mr. Pepper she had considered the 
school a huge joke. I am afraid that at first she 
quite overlooked the goodness of the Plain Gray 
Lady in giving her the position. For Grand- 
mother Gate-Woman had had a sad history. 
Only a little while before this story opens there 
had been twenty-four persons living under her 
rooftree: sons, daughters-in-law, grandsons, 
granddaughters. She had ruled them with a 
high hand as only grandmothers can rule, in 
China. 

But suddenly one merning there were only 
twenty-three of them to rule, for one of them had 
died in the night from “ Heavenly Blossoms ” 
(small-pox). And in spite of tying red rags 
around the small-pox goddess, the next day there 
were only twenty-two living under that rooftree. 
Moreover each new day the numbers kept on 
dwindling: twenty—nineteen—sixteen—thirteen 
—ten—nine—seven—five—four—three—two— 


[127] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


until finally only Grandmother Gate-Woman was 
left. Very old. Very feeble. Very broken- 
hearted. With no rice in the rice-pot. No fire- 
faggots for the stove. Slowly she starved and 
froze for nine dreadful days, when the Plain 
Gray Lady happened to hear of her. 

“Venerable Old Aunt,” she said politely, “if 
you will burn your clothes, which may have 
Heavenly Blossoms germs in them, and consent 
to wash yourself in hot water with this amber 
germ-killing liquid, then I will be glad to have 
you act as Gate-Woman for my school.” 

It took a peck of persuasion to get the old wo- 
man to dip in that pound of prevention: ‘‘ Wash? 
At my age? Unsafe! Unsafe! I have never 
had a bath. I would die! ” 

“ But won’t you also die without rice and fire- 
faggots?” 

“Sadly, sadly true!” agreed the puzzled old 
creature. But at last she decided to wash! She 
burned her faded old clothes and put on the new 
wadded garments. She sat at the gate of the 
school as guardian of the girls inside. But she 
always laughed at those girls. 

“ Girls can’t really read!” she would jeer, her 
wee dried-up face very cross. “ It’s just magic.” 


[128 ] 


TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


“But we can read! And it isn’t magic, at all! 
Listen to us.” 

“Pouf! Pouf!” the old woman would puff, 
provoked to find herself wrong, but little by little 
she began to wish that she were only young 
enough to read too. 

It was about this time that Cynthia thoweht of 
the secret. As best she could she told it to her 
ten special Blue Belles. They tinkled and gig- 
gled, and scampered to the gate. They whispered 
in the ears of Grandmother Gate-Woman. And 
every day after that there was a strange sight to 
see: always one Blue Belle studying side by side 
with that old woman. Telling her how Mr. 
Pepper had drawn picture-letters in writing class 
that morning. Telling her how Amazing Grace 
had taught them this fact and the Plain Gray 
Lady that fact. It was, of course, wonderful 
practise for them; and equally wonderful prac- 
tise for the old woman. But in order to keep it 
a secret, the lessons could only happen in the 
afternoon when the Plain Gray Lady went visit- 
ing in town, from house to house. 

“ Tell me this character again? ” Grandmother 
Gate-Woman would ask. 

“ That means ‘ happiness,’ Grandmother.” 


[ 129 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


The old woman held the character close up to 
her dim eyes: ““ Happiness! Happiness! Happi- 
ness!” she whispered, poking her finger on the 
word, “ Well, well! here it is again in God’s Let- 
ter! And here! And here!” (For she was 
reading the fifth chapter of Matthew, where the 
Beatitudes appear. Perhaps you can figure out 
which one of them the Blue Belle read to her 
next. ) 

“Fine, Grandmother! And this is what God’s 
Letter says to you today: ‘The humble-hearted 
ones have happiness because the heavenly coun- 
iry 1s theirs. ” 

“Kindly said! Kindly said!” nodded the old 
woman. Then she shut her eyes, swaying back 
and forth in her stiff chair intoning over and 
over: “ The humble-hearted ones have happiness 
—the humble-hearted ones have happiness—why, 
this is all about me, isn’t it, Cinnamon Flower?” 

You can see for yourself what a strange secret 
this was for Cynthia to have started: an old 
woman reading God’s Letter, taught by a young, 
young scholar; both of them heathen—for a 
while. 

But there came a Sunday when Grandmother 
Gate-Woman went to church. She liked it. She 


[ 130 ] 


TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


liked the simple sermon preached by Pastor 
Peace, the brother of Amazing Grace. The next 
Sunday she brought her old-time neighbors to sit 
beside her. The third Sunday she brought the 
next-door neighbors of those other neighbors. 
_By the fourth Sunday there were so many of 
them that the Plain Gray Lady was astonished, 
and the secret came out! 

“Whatever has come over old Grandmother 
Gate-Woman?” she whispered between the 
hymn and the sermon. 

Cynthia laughed softly: “Ten Tinkling Blue 
Belles have come over her!” she whispered back. 

But neither of them guessed what an interest- 
ing ending this secret was to have. For Grand- 
mother Gate-Woman grew disgusted with her 
little Blue Belle teachers. 

“What?” she would exclaim. “ You know 
enough to teach me, but not enough to teach your- 
selves? You still think that wooden idols are 
worth worshiping? Ai ya, you make me sick. 
Here I am, very old and stupid, but ’'ve become 
aninviter. It’s all I can do yet, I just invite peo- 
ple and invite people and invite people to come to 
hear this new save-the-world-doctrine. But you 
have two superior over-the-ocean ladies to watch 


[131 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


all day long! Yet you haven’t begun inviting 
anybody. Bah! Bah! Girls are indeed useless 
affairs. Useless! Useless! At least, you could 
be inviters! ” 

The Blue Belles looked stunned. They stood 
up very straight. They looked very prim. Very 
severe. They had had no idea what an upsetting 
thing their simple secret was threatening to be- 
come. But every day they could not help but dis- 
cover new things about it, for almost any time 
of the day you could see Grandmother Gate- 
Woman poke her head through the gate and call 
to the passing pedlers, chair-bearers, barbers, 
candy-sellers: “ Bend your ear! Bend your ear! 
An old woman has a secret. God has written you 
a Letter—listen ag 

Through the little grating of the gate she 
would pass on her secret to anybody who would 
stop! look! listen! And because she was such an 
“inviter ” the little chapel grew fuller and fuller 
from Sunday to Sunday. 

She had another secret scheme. For page by 
page, sheet by sheet, Grandmother Gate-Woman 
began handing out bits of God’s Letter to her 
listeners. Perhaps you do not know that all 
China considers printed paper sacred; it is never 


[ 132 ] 





TEN TINKLING BLUE BELLES 


to be dropped carelessly on the street; never 
to be left lying there to be stepped on, rudely. 
Therefore if the butchers, the bakers, the candle- 
stick-makers refused to stop! look! listen! when 
Grandmother Gate-Woman called to them she 
-had her own secret scheme—she simply poked a 
sheet of paper through the grating so that it 
might flutter to the cobblestones outside. 

But it never altogether reached the ground, for 
some one would be sure to pick it up, some one 
would be sure to carry it home, and of course 
~Grandmother Gate-Woman hoped that that some 
one would read it. You might almost say that 
she herself went home with each page of her 
scattered Bible, for she was often heard praying: 
“It’s just Your old Gate-Woman again, God. 
Now quickly, quickly, God, help them to under- 
stand that page! Softly, softly, God, step into 
their hearts! Gently, gently, God, make the doc- 
trine precious! It’s just Your old Gate-Woman 
talking. Amen.” 

Do you wonder Cynthia felt that she had really 
begun her Shepherdess work when her secret had 
turned out so beautifully? And before six 
months were over there came a night when 
several of the Blue Belles knelt in a row by the 


[133 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


side of a one-planked bed, while their China 
Shepherdess sang her prayer in English over 
their dear little pig-tailed backs: 


Saviour, like a Shepherd, lead us, 
Much we need Thy tender care, 

In Thy pleasant pastures feed us, 
For our use Thy fold prepare. 


[ 134 ] 





If one little home-made star could make such a stir in China 
perhaps you will send some others to China yourself, hoping that 
they too may go and stand “over the place where the young 
child lay.” In any case you will want to turn a Blue Belle (see 
Chapter IX for story and pattern) into a Cradle-That-Walks-On- 
Two-Feet by tying a red-coated baby on a Blue Belle’s back, 
since sisters in China are the most obliging perambulators to be 
found anywhere. 


min pS ocr 
DOAN <.o DD 


“A star, however willing, cannot help the moon.” 


“When the heron and the oyster seize each other the fisherman 
reaps the benefit.” 


“ A poor man dwells unnoticed in the market-place; a rich man 
will be visited by his distant relatives though living in the far- 
off hills.” 


ae 


x 


Pipa ARS DHA WAS aS TOLEN: BY 
THE THREE UN-WISE MEN 
OF THE EAST 


WHEN the Three Un-wise Men of the East 
discovered what it was that they had stolen, they 
were completely bewildered! And if they were 
-astonished, one wonders how Bob Drummond 
would have felt, for it was he who had made the 
star: from gilt paper and cardboard and paste he 
had made it one rainy. day, and he even printed a 
verse on it in the neatest of lettering, fully intend- 
ing to take it to church to be packed in the Christ- 
mas-box which the Juniors were filling for Cyn- 
thia. But when one owns the Best Forgettery in 
America it is the easiest thing in the world never 
to remember again about Christmas or boxes for 
China. So off went the box, and here in America 
stayed the little gilt star forlornly stretching its 
five gold arms in the darkest corner of Bob’s 
desk. But, of course, in time he discovered it 
there, and instantly his forgettery gave a pro- 
digious click—goodness; this, this was the star 


[ 137 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


he had made to twinkle on top of Cynthia’s first 
Chinese Christmas tree! With admirable rea- 
soning he decided that more than one box could 
reach China, so he sat down and wrote Cynthia 
a letter: 


** DEAR SIN: 


“I made you a star. Its ina box. Put it on 
your tree if you want to. We like your letters a 
lot. Dad gave one to the minister. He read it 
allowed in church and people smiled. A laddy 
said to me your sister has a cents of umer. But 
dont feel badly over this, she ment all write, you 
know how laddies are. 

“When I was littler I spelt so awful I couldnt 
tell pirate from parrot but now Ive learnt a lot 
off you Sin. I hop you wont meat another parrot 
on the river. He must have scart you styff; Bar- 
bra cryed over that parrot pie story. Shes so 
little, she thought the pie was made of a cookt 
parrot, see? I told her parrots didnt get cookt 
themself, they just cookt others. She said she 
hopped they woodnt cook you Sin. Well a merry 
Xmas to you Sin from 


“Your lovely bro.,  « Rana 


[ 138 ] 


THE STAR THAT WAS STOLEN 


So off his star went, traveling by itself, but 
neither Bob nor the postman nor the three Un- 
wise Men ever dreamed what a stir that star 
would create. 

And certainly, remembering what it was made 
of, you would not suppose it could possibly have 
been such a terrific temptation to the sailors on 
that little river house-boat carrying mail to all 
the towns along the way. But, after all, it was 
the most natural thing in the world for them to 
peer enviously inside the cabin and look at those 
bundles—fat ones, thin ones, long ones, short 
ones—more than could be counted on the fingers 
of ten hands. 

Said the youngest Un-wise Man (and he was 
only thirteen, with the startling name of Celes- 
tial Obedience!) : “ When we reach the City of 
Clouds, it will be the naming day for the new 
baby of my cousin Tai Fah Min, and I shall lose 
face if I have nothing to give to the child for 
good luck.” 

“Only too true!” sighed the second Un-wise 
Man sympathetically. 

“T am tired of being such a miserably unno- 
ticed relative,” complained poor Celestial Obedi- 
ence. “ Here I go traveling to marvelous places, 


[ 139 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


but what glory do I bring back to startle my rela- 
tives? They say, ‘Bah, the gods have stolen 
away his wits!’ I shall be the most insignificant 
worm in town without a present for this baby.” 

“Here! Hear!” groaned the other Un-wise 
Man with his eyes fastened on the cabin door, as 
if inside could be found the remedy to keep him 
from “losing face.” So of course you see how it 
came to pass that with so many packages on 
board, the littlest of them (chosen because small 
parcels are often most precious, and this one rat- 
tled enticingly ) could be sneaked up a blue-cotton 
sleeve without any one’s being the wiser. 

And on the twenty-fourth day of December 
their boat bumped against the banks of the City 
of Clouds, where the China Shepherdess impa- 
tiently waited while a coolie piled her boxes on 
the mission wheelbarrow and then trundled them 
hastily off where a certain tree stood waiting— 
bare, but hopeful! 

Meanwhile the Three Un-wise Men slipped 
quietly away to the naming party of Celestial 
Obedience’s cousin’s baby. Sucha party! Every 
possible neighbor and relative was squeezed in- 
side that little house, each armed with a good- 
luck present. The astonished baby nearly stared 


[ 140 ] 


THE STAR THAT WAS STOLEN 

his eyes out when the Solemn Aunt pulled on his 
head a crimson-satin cap trimmed with tiny look- 
ing-glasses. “ This,” said she, “will keep the 
evil spirits away from your honorable new head, 
since no spirit has ever been able to look at him- 
self in a mirror.” 

Next came the Sickly Aunt, hobbling up with a 
pair of slippers with cats’ paws fastened on the 
toes. “To keep your glorious feet from stum- 
bling,” she croaked in her husky voice. 

And all this time, Celestial Obedience stood in 
the doorway noticing that the baby’s mother was 
not really liking any of the presents. “ Almost 
as if she had no fear of spirits,” thought he. 
“Strange if she should like my present best.” 

But before he could get near enough a Very 
Pompous Uncle hung over the baby’s head a pic- 
ture of a hideous green devil beating a red gong. 
“ This,” thundered the Uncle, “ will drive away 
the evil spirits.” 

“Um-m-m!”? murmured the admiring rela- 
tives, the little mother looking doubtful. Thena 
Stingy Cousin brought a red string. “It may 
seem a mere trifle,” she simpered, “ but tie it over 
the gate-post and the baby will never get prickly 
heat—never! I’ve tried it with all of mine.” 


[ 141 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 

This kept up until finally the two older Un-wise 
Men pushed Celestial Obedience forward to make 
his little speech. “ Illustrious and never-to-be- 
equaled child,” he said, bowing profusely, “ your 
stupid sailor cousin brings you a trifling nothing 
from the distant places of the Middle Flowery 
Kingdom.” 

“Mercy on us,” gasped the aunts and uncles, 
“if here isn’t that wretched Celestial Obedience 
giving the baby something in a box!” 

“All this traveling up and down the river has 
done the boy good—quite a speech, wasn’t it?” 

“ Get out of my way,” ordered a rich and peey- 
ish relative, “how can I see what’s in that fel- 
low’s box when you block the view? ” 

“Don’t you suppose I’m curious, too?” 
snapped the obstacle. 

All of this was very pleasant for Celestial Obe- 
dience to overhear—noticed at last he was! 

Meanwhile the baby’s mother was untying the 
string and ripping off the paper. It must be ad- 
mitted that Celestial Obedience was as curious as 
she to know the contents. 

“The string is red—that’s a good sign,” com- 
mented a cousin. 

“The box is red, too. Oh, very good luck.” 


[ 142 ] 


THE STAR THAT WAS STOLEN 


“And something rattles inside! I declare the 
boy has outdone himself—he will be rice-less for 
a year on account of this extravagance. Oh, 
look! look! there itis! But what is it?” 

Oh, yes, that was the burning question—what 
was this gold thing with five sharp points? The 
uncles did not know. The aunts did not know. 
The cousins did not know. Certainly Celestial 
Obedience did not know. 

But the quiet little mother gave one astonished 
look, then cried radiantly: “ A star! I do declare 
—a star!” 

“What’s it for, stupid creature?” asked her 
husband impatiently. 

“T—only—know,” she gasped, “ that—the— 
winter—I—went—to—the—Christians’ School 
—they—talked—about—a—star.”’ 

* Ah—ha!” hissed the uncles and aunts in a 
dreadful chorus, turning savagely on poor Celes- 
tial Obedience, “how dare you bring ill luck on 
a poor innocent baby by giving him something 
Christian? Bah, you dangerous fellow, here’s 
his silly mother been bewitched all these years be- 
cause of spending a few weeks with those foreign 
devils. Put him outdoors, the half-witted idiot! ” 

His grandness oozed away in a sorry trickle. 


[ 143 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 
Whatahorror! To have happened to steal some- 
thing so utterly inappropriate. No wonder the 
grandparents were provoked, and the uncles and 
cousins and aunts. He hung his head. 

But the two other Un-wise Men poked him in 
the ribs. “ Don’t lose your face!” they whis- 
pered, and one of them said aloud: “ It passes 
understanding how you fail to notice the poor 
boy’s kindness! Didn’t he go all the way to 
Shanghai for this treasure? Of course he did! 
And didn’t he drag it through perils of robbers 
and rapids? Of course he did! And isn’t this 
season and this weather a time when men hug the 
shore? Bah, his bravery is colossal. He did 
what only grown men do, all for the good of his 
little new cousin’s present.” 

“Big words! But what’s his present for? 
Speak up!” the others cried. The poor Un-wise 
Man scratched his head and glared hopelessly at 
the third Un-wise Man. The third Un-wise Man 
cocked his head on one side and thought deeply. 
Then in a sepulchral tone he said: “ We dare not 
tell you all, but this we can say—it is a secret, 
specially beneficial to babies born at this season 
of the year. He will be sure to grow up wiser 
and braver and stronger than any other child in 


[ 144 ] 


THE STAR THAT WAS STOLEN 


town, all on account of this star which Celestial 
Obedience went through tortures to procure.” 

“Tt must be very stiff magic!” they said. 

“Very stiff!” agreed Celestial Obedience. 
~ “ Wouldn’t do to tell the secret,” said the Un- 
wise Man. “ Once speak it in the air and the up- 
per-air demons would overhear—and then, mis- 
fortune! ” 

“Just so!” agreed the party soberly. “ And 
where should we put this superlative magic? ”’ 

Instantly the Pompous Uncle replied, “ Put it 
over my green demon, of course; then the star 
can watch the demon and the demon can watch 
the gong and the gong can scare away the evil 
spirits—what could possibly happen to the child 
then?” 

What, indeed! But surely Bob Drummond 
would have gasped to see the reverent ceremony 
with which his little star was fastened on the 
wall, while the baby stared round-eyed at the Un- 
wise Men, until the youngest of them felt uncom- 
fortable inside, and lay down to sleep that night 
wondering in his heart of hearts about that star 
—what sort of a thing was it, anyhow? 

The baby’s mother wondered, too. Dim 
memories flickered and died out. It was so long 


[ 145 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


ago (mine years) since she had spent those 
months in school, and what with whippings and 
sneerings and jeerings, all she used to know had 
been almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. 
So the next morning she took the piece of paper 
in which the box had been wrapped, and fastened 
it to the outer gate-post, so that the stamps and 
the writing showed. 

“O very far-away God of the Christians,” she 
prayed, “they may keep me indoors like a slave 
under their rooftree, they may whip me for re- 
membering all the little odds and ends of learn- 
ing, but oh! let something come of this paper on 
the gate!” 

And something did. 

For Cynthia, hurrying down that street on the 
morning of December twenty-fifth, was amazed 
to see her own name and address attached to a 
gate-post, written in the plainest kind of Ameri- 
can-boy penmanship. Needless to say she went 
indoors. And needless to say she did not hurry 
out. There was too much to hear and tell. 

“But how wonderful!” she cried as they 
handed her the star which should have been her 
own. “See for yourselves that the star has 
somehow come where it belongs, for on it is a 


[ 146 ] 


THE STAR THAT WAS STOLEN 


Bible verse which plainly says, ‘And the star 
came and stood over where the young child lay.’ 
To think you have a Christmas Baby in your 
home—a little Jesus-Christ-Child, the very first 
I’ve seen in town. Oh, such an honor! You 
must be very happy.” 

“W-we are!” stammered the gratified grand- 
parents. 

* But you must show me how to bring up such 
a special kind of child,” the mother begged. 

“ That’s what I came to China for,” Cynthia 
smiled, thankful that God uses even Un-wise 
Men and little cardboard stars to bring peace on 
earth, good will to men. 


[ 147 ] 








A brown or gray shoe-box (or hat-box, if you want something 
still larger) will make a fine home for the Peppers. The bottom 
will form the floor, and doors like shutters may be cut to swing 
on the uncut parts like hinges (until the Oculist steals it). Paint 
a door-god on the inside of each panel in gorgeous colors. Per- 
haps you could model an idol from moulding clay for use in 
-Chapter XVI. A shoe-button will form the door-knob—punch 
the shank through the cardboard and use a small safety pin to 
fasten it on the back side. 

To secure an even pattern for the roof, fold a piece of news- 
paper, and starting from the fold draw one-half the roof. Cut 
this out, unfold, and spread on bright-green cardboard. ‘Trace 
the outline, and cut out two roofs. Before fastening these in 
place, it will be necessary to slit down each corner of the box 
about an inch. Bend the front and back wall inward for that 
half inch and clamp the green roof to this slanting inner support 
with brass paper fasteners. It will be necessary to cut away 
triangles of the projecting side walls. Be sure to have the eaves 
overhang the front and back walls. The tops of the roof may 
now be brought together into a ridge and either sewed or glued 
or clamped, then painted black. Tiling may be indicated by a 
few curving strokes. Why not have a whole street of houses? 
What fun to point out the House of the Stolen Star (Chapter X), 
of the Vacuum-cleaning Pig (Chapter XIV), of Deacon Ding 
(Chapter XXI), etc., etc. 


mim master 
IBA M AGODA 


“ Happiness and trouble stand at every one’s gate; yours is the 
choice which you will invite in.” 


“ Nobody’s family can hang out the sign, ‘ Nothing the matter 
here.’ ” 


“Water which is distant is no good for a fire which is near.” 


XI 
THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


You must admit that there is nothing quite like 
a front door. In America it shuts out everybody. 
And a front door in China is like our doors, only 
much more so! For there is that little matter of 
evil spirits who must also be shut out. Espe- 
cially at New Year’s time. It is bad enough all 
the year round, as you already know: so bad that 
devil screens guard every front door on the out- 
side while paper door-gods painted in gorgeous 
reds and greens guard the inside. But at New 
Year’s time there has been so much houseclean- 
ing going on beforehand that every evil spirit in 
all China goes house-hunting for some quiet nook 
or cranny to rest his little invisible heels! Al- 
most, you feel sorry for him, don’t you? Until 
you remember the spiteful, frightful things he is 
supposed to do to human beings—sickness and 
poverty; burnt food and poor crops; a fire that 
smokes; eyes that see dimly; teeth with such an 
ache that you can fairly feel that little spirit pat- 
tering from tooth to tooth, sitting in a down- 


[151 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


stairs tooth to kick up its heels in glee, then scam- 
pering to an up-stairs tooth to go to bed for the 
night, causing the whole cheek to puff and puff 
and puff! 

Surely you realize now about the charms on 
chimneys, and the shoot-the-chutes of the curv- 
ing rooftops. And always at New Year’s time 
you would realize also the preciousness of the 
front door. 

Therefore, consider the horror of the Five Lit- 
tle Peppers when on New Year’s Eve the front 
door of their home had disappeared! For once, 
at least, the feelings of these Blue Belles matched 
their garments. Blue as indigo, they were; both 
they and their brother, their uncles, their aunts, 
their parents, their grandparents. For this was 
a calamity! A family simply dared not start a 
New Year without a door. Every evil spirit in 
the Middle Flowery Kingdom would come crush- 
ing and rushing inside. The family would lose 
all their money, they would starve, they would 
be sick, they would die! You can see for yourself 
why they were blue. 

Grandfather Pepper spoke up. He was so 
deaf that he spoke far louder than was necessary, 
and his voice boomed out in a truly terrific fash- 


[152] 


THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


ion. (The five Blue Belle Peppers did wish that 
he would whisper.) “ Who,’ he demanded 
sternly, “ who in this family owes a debt? ” 

Ah, that was it! Only one thing made doors 
disappear on New Year’s Eve—a debt. For any- 
body to whom you owed money felt a perfect 
right to steal away your door, knowing only too 
well that you would pay that debt by hook or by 
crook at once in order to safeguard your premises 
from the home-seeking demons swarming in the 
outer air on New Year’s. 

“ Who owes a debt?”’ boomed grandfather. 

“Not I!” said one Uncle Pepper. 

“Nor I!” said a second. 

“Nor I!” said a third. 

“Nor I!” said our own Mr. Pepper, the 
scholar, he with the goggles and finger shields. 

“ Now think!” boomed grandfather. “ Your 
mind is so often off with the ancients. Think! 
Have you not bought one of the four jewels of a 
scholar—paper, brushes, inkslab, ink—and left it 
unpaid for?” 

“ No, no!” said Mr. Pepper, wagging his head. 
Whereupon every Uncle Pepper looked accus- 
ingly at every Aunt Pepper: “ How about you, 
Inside Person?” 


[153 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


But the aunts wagged their heads. No, not 
they! 

It was a perfectly awful occasion. Where, oh, 
where was the door? And who, oh, who had 
stolen it? There was only one thing to do, and 
they did it by standing in the doorless doorway 
tossing off firecrackers into the air, ten or twelve 
to each minute, for evil spirits have a perfect hor- 
ror of noise. They pick up their invisible heels 
and dash madly away. Suddenly in the midst 
of the terrific din our own Mr. Pepper clapped 
his hand to his forehead and cried: “ I’ve got it! 
I know!” 

“Speak louder!” boomed grandfather. 

Our Mr. Pepper yelled into his father’s ear: 
“ It’s these spectacles, Ancient and Honorable; I 
owe the Oculist.” 

“Mercy on us!” screamed his Inside Person 
(wife) almost fainting, while the Blue Belles 
hung their heads for shame to think that it was 
Papa Pepper causing all the trouble. 

Grandfather exploded with wrath. The uncles 
exploded their firecrackers. Mr. Pepper went 
dashing off through the darkness with a bobbing 
paper lantern to the home of the Oculist, with a 
string of cash to pay his bill. And all this time 


{ 154 } 


THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


Cynthia lay wide-awake in bed startled by the 
awful noises everywhere: “ Like five Fourths of 
July rolled in one! Less than ever do I believe in 
this Firecracker Insurance Company! ” she com- 
plained to the ceiling. But the ceiling looked 
flatly disapproving as if about to say: “ It’s hap- 
pened on New Year’s for hundreds of years. It 
will keep on for hundreds more. Grin and bear 
it.” “Twill not grin!” vowed Cynthia. 

Meanwhile Mr. Pepper had reached the Ocu- 
list’s home and found him celebrating noisily. 
“ Here is the cash for my glasses, you ungracious 
person. Why did you not let me know I was in 
your debt? I would gladly have paid you.” 

“Let you know?” roared the Oculist crossly. 
“Haven’t I been letting you know? Haven't I 
come telling you that my rice-bowl was empty, 
that my children were starving, that my poor 
aged parents were falling into their very coffins 
from hunger and cold? Pouf! Told you, in- 
deed! I’ve done nothing but tell you. But you 
keep your nose in a book and your mind in the 
dim past. Oculists’ stomachs mean nothing to 
you. Oculists’ parents mean noth f 

“ Oh, c-come n-now, stammered Mr. Pepper 
regretfully, “I’m not quite so bad as that. 


[155 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Here’s your cash, my poor fellow. Truly I am 
sadly forgetful. Truly repentant. Now give me 
my front door, please.” 

“All gone! Cut up for kindling wood! 
Burned in the oven! All gone!” clucked the 
Oculist indifferently. 

“Do not use up the air with such pleasantries,” 
begged Mr. Pepper. “It is necessary for me to 
have glasses because I am a professor at the 
Heavenly Education-Instilling School. I have 
many weighty matters on my mind. Many 
problems. I apologize for my thoughtlessness. 
But now please, magnanimously, graciously, con- 
descend to return to me my door.” 

“Gone up in smoke! All gone!” 

“But you only took it this afternoon—how 
could it be burned already? Surely you are sim- 
ply making holiday sport with me. Yet think, 
I pray you, of my old father at home, terrified; 
my old mother, pale with fear 3 

“Indeed! Do you say it? Well, even so was 
my own father terrified of starving, and my own 
mother pale from fear of being roofless. Yet you 
turned deaf ears to my bills. So now gently, 
gently, be gone.” 

“My one bill could not feed your parents long! 


[ 156 ] 





THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


One small pair of glasses could not make a roof- 
tree fall. Come now, give me my door,” begged 
Mr. Pepper. 

“The door? What door? How you talk! I 
‘burned it, I tell you. Gently, gently, be gone, so 
that I may start my New Year’s celebration. 
See, the moon is rising. It is not good luck to be 
arguing any longer. Please trouble me no more. 
I must burn my last year’s door-god and paste up 

a new one.” 

_ And before Mr. Pepper knew what was hap- 
pening, he was wandering the street with his 
little pale lantern, listening to the boom of giant 
firecrackers and seeing cascades of fireworks 
lighting the sky. Just as he was feeling the most 
desperate he glanced up at the Heavenly Educa- 
tion-Instilling School. There was a light in an 
upper room. Perhaps the Honorable Principal 
could help him, for he seemed to lack courage to 
go home. It is true that he might “ lose face” by 
appealing to a woman; but alas! he would lose 
just as much if the door were not saved. 

He knocked at the gate. But old Grandmother 
Gate-Woman slept soundly. It seemed unbe- 
lievable to him that she who, last year, had set 
off firecrackers with her neighbors, should now 


[ 157 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


feel safe enough to sleep without firecracker in- 
surance. But he was much too dignified to give 
any further consideration to a mere stupid old 
woman, even when at last she came clumping to 
the gate to let him in. 

Cynthia came down-stairs first. He explained 
his tragic situation: no front door! “ That’s too 
bad,” she said sympathetically, “‘ for it’s so cold.” 

“ Cold?” he echoed, surprised. ‘‘ Cold doesn’t 
matter. It’s the New Year’s demons seeking new 
homes.” 

Cynthia was puzzled, but the Plain Gray Lady 
coming into the room understood only too well: 
“My heart is heavy for you, Mr. Pepper,” she 
said. “ You had told me that you were an ear- 
nest inquirer about my save-the-world-doctrine. 
You told me that such words as the Bible con- 
tains were rare in China, that they very much 
entered into you.” 

“Truly! Truly!” he bowed. “ But will the 
Honorable Christian God guard the door? On 
New Year’s? ” 

“T think I will go home with you right now 
and try to open up this doctrine more plainly to 
your family, Mr. Pepper.” And a few minutes 
later, under the stars and the moon, a little pro- 


[158 ] 


THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


cession followed after Mr. Pepper’s lantern as he 
hurried to his doorless home. The firecrackers 
were still booming. Grandfather still booming, 
also, in disgust. 

The five blue little Blue Belles clung to Cyn- 
thia’s knees: “ Oh, Shepherdess! Shepherdess! ” 
they sobbed. 

The Plain Gray Lady stood up very straight 
and serious: “I have brought you a Door,’ she 
said. 

“What is this over-the-ocean woman say- 
ing?” boomed grandfather. 

“She says she has brought us a door!” 
shouted the family in a chorus, looking at the 
little lady expecting to see a real door appear in 
her empty hands. They offered her a seat. 
After all the proper persuasion she consented to 
sit in it. 

“ Tf I were you,” she said, “ I would tack up a 
quilt over the door-opening to protect it until 
morning.” This was such a sensible plan that a 
heavy quilt was soon in place. Then the Plain 
Gray Lady told her story of the God-Who-Is-A- 
Door. ‘“ Iam the door,” He had said of Himself. 
She explained very carefully what this meant. 
She also quoted from the Hundred and Twenty- 


[159 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


first Psalm: “ The Lord shall preserve thy com- 
ing in and thy going out from this day forth, even 
forevermore.” She told them about America, 
where nobody worried at all about evil spirits. 
She told them that the only evil spirit in the 
world is the spirit of envy and hatred and sin in 
a person’s own heart. 

“T have been in China twenty years,” she said. 
“T used to live in a town where the people loved 
me, then a few years ago I came here where 
every one seemed to hate me, at first. Yet I was 
safe. Jesus Christ, the Door, stood between me 
and dangers. He can stand between you and 
dangers. For the God who made the air and the 
water, made you too.” 

“Tt sounds very good,” boomed Grandfather. 
“ Tell us again.” 

The Plain Gray Lady told them again. The 
Five Little Peppers dared to put in a word some- 
times, themselves, until their father felt actually 
proud of the wisdom they seemed to have stored 
in their heads. Whole verses of Bible came 
tripping glibly off their tongues! ‘‘ You have 
made my daughters almost as good as sons,” he 
acknowledged. The Five Little Peppers tried to 
look demure. And succeeded! 


[ 160 ] 


THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


Along toward morning there was a great com- 
motion heard just outside the quilt hanging at 
the door-way. When the family hurried out to 
see what was the matter they were simply over- 
come to see the Spectacle-Selling Oculist with 
three coolies and a door. The door! The Ocu- 
list was very meek. He looked rather sheepish. 
It was Grandmother Gate-Woman who did most 
of the talking: 

“Well, here’s the door! I went and got it. 
After Mr. Pepper left the school last night I 
thought maybe God wanted Mr. Pepper to have 
his door, so I just went over to the Oculist and 
gave him a good talking to! A woman of my age 
has some privileges, I hope! The very idea— 
stealing a door. Any door. At any time. It 
says in God’s Letter, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ 
Well, here’s the door! ” 

Mr. Pepper looked perfectly thunderstruck. 
He actually had to swallow before he found his 
voice: “ But what made you do it? You don’t 
know me. I’ve never troubled to speak to you. 
And you don’t know my family at all.” 

“Why yes, I do,” Grandmother Gate-Woman 
chuckled, pointing a merry thumb at each of the 
Peppers in turn. “ You’re God’s child, and 


[161 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


you're God’s child, and you, and you, and you! 
Well, I’m God’s child too. So that makes us 
brothers and sisters. I thought I had lost all my 
family, but now just look at me! Everybody be- 
longs to me! And if a brother of mine wants a 
door which another brother of mine has stolen, I. 
just goand getit. Seer” 

But the Peppers simply could not see. 

“ Oh, well, I don’t wonder you’re surprised. I 
haven’t known it myself very long. But only 
yesterday I spelled a verse out of God’s Letter. 
It said, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ‘No, 
Lord, I’m not,’ I answered, ‘but I will be if 
You'll please show me how.’ And last night God 
showed me about the door. That’s all! See?” 

But the Peppers really could not see. They 
still looked stunned. Grandmother Gate-Woman 
chuckled again. “It’s really a sort of a joke, if 
you look at it one way. You see, I’m such a dull 
stupid old woman that I can’t fix God’s Letter in 
my mind unless I trot right off and practise it 
on somebody. See?” 

And still nobody saw! “ Stupid?” thought 
Cynthia, amazed. “Stupid? This dear brave 
old saint trudging through dark Chinese streets 
at midnight to demand a stranger’s front door 


[ 162 ] 


THE LOST-AND-FOUND FRONT DOOR 


from another stranger? Surely here is one of 
God’s great flaming apostles!” 

So it was a wonderful New Year’s Day for 
everybody after all. The Peppers dressed in 
their new clothes and called on all their friends. 
The Blue Belles stuffed all day long on peanuts 
and candy and melon-seeds. They blew whistles 
and played games. They collected the big red 
calling-cards left by the visitors who came to see 
them. In fact, it was almost like any other New 
Year’s Day. Almost; but not quite. For although 
Grandfather burned the door-god, he did not 
burn any spirit money with it to insure a good 
report of himself in the upper air. Neither did 
he paste up a new door-god as he always had 
done on other New Years. So that you can see 
how the front door of a Chinese Christian be- 
comes converted with the rest of the family! 


[ 163 ] 


.. 
i, i9 ad ° 
ty ae 








You can see for yourself that two horns was not the kind of 
“wee, modest timid beastie” about which Bobbie Burns once 
wrote a poem. You can make a very presentable water buffalo for 
this story if you ask your grocer for a cardboard advertisement of 
the Horlick’s Malted Milk cow. Paste extra half-moon horns in 
place and paint the whole animal a dark shaggy gray in streaks, 
with a Buffalo Bill perched on its back. Make the poor orphan 
boy as patched as possible. 


minmit tt 
LADA MPS Th th 


“Do not lace your boots in a melon field or adjust your hat 
under a plum tree if you would avoid suspicion.” 


“The insect can fly but ten paces, but in the tail of a noble 
steed he can go a thousand miles.” 


“The locust chases the cicada, ignorant that the yellow bird is 
after it.” 


XII 


THE HEART OF BUFFALO BILL WAS 
FIVE-JACKETS-COLD 


NOTHING is more uncomfortable than to be 
five-jackets-cold in China without the five jackets 
to wear. Once upon a time Buffalo Bill could 
have had all the jackets he pleased: on the coldest 
five-coat-days he would put on one, he would put 
on two, he would put on three, and then with 
difficult wrigglings and stretchings he would 
manage to squeeze into jackets number four and 
five; until what had been originally a thin little 
pillar of a boy became a regular pillow. So 
plump that his arms would not move, and so fat 
that he could hardly bend to see his toes. But 
that was long ago before Feng Shui brought such 
bad luck to his rooftree. 

On this particular day Buffalo Bill looked ex- 
actly like a little smoking chimney in the freezing 
morning air. He thrashed around with his arms 
like an awkward scarecrow ina heavy wind as he 
tried to keep warm, for he was reduced to wear- 
ing only one thin blue-cotton jacket; his nose 


[ 167 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


grew so red that you might have feared it would 
worry Two Horns, the buffalo, except for the 
fact that nothing about Buffalo Bill could possi- 
bly frighten Two Horns, and neither could any- 
thing about the fierce Two Horns possibly 
frighten Buffalo Bill. But that is not saying that 
neither of them could not frighten Miss Cynthia 
Bo-Peep! No indeed! For you are soon to see 
that charming young lady running a Marathon 
race which still seems to her like one long wild 
nightmare. 

You are therefore to picture Buffalo Bill smok- 
ing like a little chimney as his breath rose in the 
chilly air, while he himself crouched down beside 
the giant body of Two Horns, who lay in the half- 
frozen meadow looking exactly like a great 
brown boulder. He was so pleasantly warm that 
Buffalo Bill was almost asleep with the comfort 
of it, when suddenly he jumped up awakened by 
a most peculiar noise. The noise was Cynthia, 
singing as she took a short cut across the fields on 
her way to visit the Handkerchief Family whom 
you met a little while ago. 

Cynthia was very happy because she had poll- 
parroted so much Chinese that at last the Plain 
Gray Lady could send her on errands alone! She 


[ 168 ] 


THE HEART OF BUFFALO BILL 


began to feel as Bo-Peep must have felt when the 
tails returned to her sheep! She could not sing 
too loudly or rejoice too heartily.. Besides, was 
she not all alone? 

Imagine her astonishment, therefore, when 
she saw steam rising from behind a giant boulder. 
“Dear me, some one has built afire over there, 
I'd better keep quiet,” for of course it might be 
thieves or bandits—or—pirates on land. Softly 
she walked on her way, watching the steam cau- 
tiously until she saw a little tattered boy rise up 
from behind the boulder and begin to thrash 
around with his arms like a scarecrow in a gale 
or a windmill in Holland. One cannot be afraid 
of little Chinese boys as comical as that, so Cyn- 
thia sang a greeting across the field to him: 
“Have you eaten your rice?” since this is the 
politest possible way to say ‘“‘ How do you do?” 
in China. 

“Have eaten,” mumbled the startled Buffalo 
Bill, for it was not altogether pleasant to be 
awakened from sleep by a strange she-person 
marching over toward him. He began to feel 
very shy. Now of course you are prepared for 
what is coming, aren’t you? Cynthia, walking 
toward a rock to practise Chinese on a little boy! 


[ 169 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Cynthia, wearing the jolliest red sweater ever 
knit by any college girl, with a long red muffler 
streaming east and west from her shoulders! 

The bashful boy grew so embarrassed that he 
kicked the rock with his foot. The rock arose. 
The rock, of course, was Two Horns! Two 
Horns took one lazy glance at the red she-person 
advancing, then grew positively enchanted. 

For her part, Cynthia took one look at this rock 
which suddenly had four legs, a lashing tail, and 
great horns curving like a new moon, then Cyn- 
thia, I regret to state, grew positively panic-y 
with the vision. She began to run. 

The rock-on-legs began to run after her. Buf- 
falo Bill began to run after the rock-on-legs. 
Any one with sufficient leisure could have quoted 
the Chinese proverb, “ The locust chases the ci- 
cada ignorant that the yellow bird is after it.” 
But there was no leisure in the world just then, 
for Buffalo Bill was yelling wildly: “ Halt! 
Halt! ” 

Two Horns was chortling with glee. Halt? 
now? with all this jolly fun? Not much! It 
made no difference how hard little boys pulled 
his tail he merrily chased the red lady, dragging 
the little boys after him pell-mell. Or was it just 


[ 170 ] 


THE HEART OF BUFFALO BILL 


one little boy? For he recognized the loved voice. 
He turned his head and bellowed pleasantly: 
“Don’t spoil my fun, old pal!”. It was this 
trifling delay alone which saved Cynthia. Some- 


- how or other she clambered frantically up a stone 


wall, so high that she could safely look down at 
Two Horns as he champed on the ground below 
her. 

Buffalo Bill looked up at the lady. Surely this 
was the friend of his Handkerchief-Giver. He 
bowed. 

“Bad boy!” called Cynthia. “Go lose your 
head at once! ” 

He had never been so astonished in his life. 
What ingratitude was this? Hadn’t he run and 
run and run? Why must he lose his head? For 
of course he had no way of knowing that the lady 
was so new in China that her words grew fright- 
fully jumbled, especially with buffalo bulls charg- 
ing at her. “Go lead off your bull,’ was what 
she supposed she had said. 

Buffalo Bill climbed up on the back of Two 
Horns. He looked as proud as haughty sultans 
might on elephants. 

“Go lose your head!” called Cynthia again, 
waving her hand to shoo him away. 


[171] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


He had never felt so insulted. Poor little 
lonely fellow, nobody loved him anyhow; but 
after trying to save a lady’s life it was hard luck 
to earn such ingratitude! He poked Two Horns 
in the special fashion which meant, “Turn 
around.” Two Horns turned. He poked in the 
code meaning, “ Gallop!’”? Two Horns galloped; 
until in five minutes Cynthia saw them like mere 
specks in the distance. “ That nice little fellow! ” 
she thought gratefully. “ And how well I ran! 
How well I climbed! Above all, how well I spoke 
Chinese under difficulties! I’m improving.” 

Which only goes to prove that boasters never 
see themselves as others see them. For certainly 
Buffalo Bill had his own private opinion about 
her. He hardly knew whether to be enraged or 
enchanted when she came a few days later to pre- 
sent him with a little quilted coat, embarrassingly 
new and blue. “It’s never been to the washing- 
pool even once!” he gloated. For his only other 
coat was patched with all shades of faded blues 
left over from clothes of his uncles, his aunts, and 
his cousins. 

“What made her give it to me?” he asked 
Aunt Ling. 

Aunt Ling shrugged her shoulders: “ Who 


[ 172 ] 


THE HEART OF BUFFALO BILL 


knows about the hearts of these over-the-ocean 
women? Soft! She told us that in this month 
of February there is an over-the-ocean day when 
people give love-gifts to one another. She 
- brought love-gifts to each of us. See? One for 
Pink Opal, one for Sister Pearl, one for little 
Moonbeam, one for old Grandmother Ling.” 

Buffalo Bill fingered the valentines curiously. 
On the backs of each the Plain Gray Lady had 
written a Bible verse in Chinese. But Buffalo 
Bill could not read. Pink Opal could not read. 
Little Moonbeam could not read. Nobody could. 

“T got the best love-gift of all, didn’t I?” he 
asked. 

“Because you saved her life! She asked many 
questions about you. Finally she said that the 
heart of an orphan boy might get as five-jackets- 
cold as his body! She wants to warm your 
heart! ” 

Buffalo Bill pretended to think this was all per- 
fect nonsense. A young gentleman who has lived 
ten winters and ten summers can warm his own 
heart, thank you. He blustered around as if he 
were greatly annoyed by this lady. But actually, 
he was too flattered for words! Actually, he was 
as vain as a peacock, as he pulled coat number 


Aawregl 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


two on top of coat number one every morning. 
But it was not until spring that he managed to 
let any of his true feelings show through. And 
even then I doubt whether Cynthia quite under- 
stood him. 

For she had been visiting Aunt Ling, and com- 
ing home in the late afternoon had stopped to 
gather violets. 

“Oh, look!” she called to Buffalo Bill, her 
face all pink and glowing. “Look! These grow 
in America, too. I’m taking back a basketful to 
decorate the school.”’ She buried her face in the 
violets and drew long deep breaths. 

Buffalo Bill was horrified. He pointed at the 
sun and cried: “Honorably stop! The sun! 
The sun!” 

Cynthia sat back on her heels, astonished. 
Was there something deadly poisonous in 
Chinese violets? 

The little boy still pointed at the sky: “ Not 
safe! Not safe to pick flowers at sunset-time, 
for that is the hour when all the evil spirits out- 
of-doors are looking for some place to spend the 
night. They crawl inside the flower-petals, and 
if you take them into your house, alas! alas! what 
illness and misfortune you will have!” 


[ 174 ] 


THE HEART OF BUFFALO BILL 


Cynthia preached a little sermon at him: “ The 
God who made the violets made me, too. How 
can I be afraid, silly boy?” 

The silly boy looked skeptical, and when she 
~ walked off with her arms full of violets he dis- 
covered that his five-jackets’-cold-heart was 
nearly breaking with the pity of it. She was so 
precious! And now she would die. What care- 
less creatures women are! 

Cynthia would have liked to stay behind and 
convince the poor boy of her safety, but you will 
remember that the city gates were closed at sun- 
set-time and she did not want to be locked out, 
of course. 

Old Uncle Gate-Keeper warned her also when 
he saw the violets. ‘‘ There will be trouble under 
your rooftree during all this moon! ” he mourned, 
wagging his poor old head with flattering con- 
cern. 

But about the thing which flattered Cynthia 
the most she wrote home to America: “ And so, 
you safe young flower-pickers, having introduced 
you to Ling Po (I made up ‘ Buffalo Bill’ my- 
self), I must now tell you the sequel. For yes- 
terday Grandmother Gate-Woman came to tell 
me that the smallest boy in China was inquiring 


TAO 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


for me at the gate. Was I dead yet? What? 
Not even down with a plague? Not the slightest 
sickness? Well, well—unbelievable And no 
other misfortunes of any kind? She said that he 
went into such details and seemed to be thinking 
up so many new possible ailments that she won- 
dered if I would please trouble myself to come 
down and relieve his anxiety. You may be sure 
that I hurried to the gate, and there leaned Buf- 
fallo Bill. Very gruff and rough and mannish. 
“Here I am,’ I said, ‘altogether safe and sound 
in spite of flowers picked at sunset-time.’ He 
looked me up and down carefully. Then he said 
*“Humph!’ whatever that may mean. After 
which he poked a present into my hand, and took 
to his heels and ran. It was a stone. Found in 
‘our’ field, I think, for there was earth on it. 
Some people might not think a pebble much of a 
present, but the curious thing about my pebble 
is that it’s arrow-shaped: a bit wider at one end 
with a dent in the middle of the widest part, and 
a sharp point opposite. A heart, you see, a heart! 
I don’t believe Buffalo Bill can be nearly as five- 
jackets-cold as he used to be—not when he puts 
sermons in stones. Certainly I never had a nicer 
valentine.” 


[ 176 ] 








Here is Mr. Si. Also the Empress in the first silk dress ever 
made in the history of mankind. If you act out the story you can 
have a box-house with tip-up roofs for the palace, and a mulberry 
tree (which can be a twig stuck in a spool) under which a Blue 
Belle can stand, pretending to be the little homesick Empress. 
When you reach the part which Silver Dew Drop played, you can 
have another Blue Belle ride in a wheelbarrow (see Chapter II) 
as she is trundled to her factory. You can prove how long twelve 
hours are by moving the hands of a clock slowly around and 
around and around the dial until a whole day has passed by— 
how many minutes in twelve hours? Does fifteen cents seem 
enough to pay a Chinese child for loss of sunlight, fresh air, and 
play, and school? 


mim mist 
UBAM <AGAD 


“ Patience and a mulberry leaf will make a silk gown.” 


“With coarse food to eat, water to drink, and the bended arm 
as a pillow, happiness may still exist.” 


“Unjustly got wealth is like snow sprinkled with hot water.” 


XIII 


WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF MR. SI 
AND THE EMPRESS SI-LING-CHI 


“To NECKTIE BoB AND My RIBBON-WEARING 
SistERS—Goop Morninc! Have You 
EATEN Your RICE? 


“Tt is February as I write you, darlings, and 
in America you are about to celebrate Silk Week, 
and by the time you get my letter it will be April 
here in China where we shall then be celebrating 
Silk Week, too, with quaint ceremonies which I 
long to see. So I’m writing you a story-letter to- 
day, really three stories—one about Mr. Si, one 
about the Empress, and one about my precious 
Silver Dew Drop. 

“Tt is only courteous, of course, to begin with 
the Empress. She was about fourteen years old 
when our story opens, and they say that she was 
feeling very lonely, for she had recently been 
married to the Emperor of China and was con- 
sequently far from her own old home. I suppose 
that she used to stand on the palace terrace and 


[179 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





gaze off into the dim distance where the well- 
known rooftree was. But one day as she gazed 
she looked up into a tree and was famous ever 
afterward. Personally I have looked up into 
many a Chinese tree myself, and have never yet 
grown famous. But of course it had to be a 
special Tree With Mr. Si In It. She saw it first! 
She saw it 2,640 years before Christ was born. 

“Little Mr. Si went fast asleep when she first 
saw him. He was very small, about three inches 
long and as big around as your thumb. He 
owned fully a hundred little feet with which he 
could crawl to his home at the top of a mulberry- 
tree, where all he ever did was to munch mul- 
berry-leaves from morning till night. Eat. Eat. 
Eat. No time off for playing or even for sleep- 
ing, although once in every seven days he had to 
change his clothes. But this was no trouble at 
all—he simply shuffled off the old gray suit and 
went right on eating, for his new suit grew on 
his back right under the old one. Did you ever 
hear of anything so economical? 

“But while the Empress Si-Ling-Chi was 
watching him he suddenly wanted to stop eating. 
And he did stop! He also wanted to go to sleep. 
And he did sleep! But first of all he had to make 


[180 ] 





COMPLIMENTS OF THE EMPRESS 


his bed. Sleeping in treetops is risky business, 
so he got a little rope and lashed his bed to a 
certain quiet twig. But you will be as astonished 
as the Empress to hear that he found the rope in 
- lus mouth, This is how he found it: He threw 
out a tiny thread from each side of his head, and 
since they were made of a jellylike fluid they 
hardened as soon as they struck the air. He fast- 
ened them to the twig; then by slowly tossing his 
head right and left he spun the two threads in 
one, making his rope longer and longer, and 
stronger and stronger. After which he pro- 
ceeded to make his bed. The Empress could 
hardly believe her eyes when she saw that he 
found his bedclothes in his mouth, too! Again 
he slowly moved his head back and forth, while 
soft silky thread came from the corners of his 
mouth; and from these silken strands he wove a 
coverlet round and round his body. The threads 
glued themselves to other threads, and hardened 
on the outside like a piece of parchment. Then 
he went to sleep. 

“The Empress had never envied any one quite 
so deeply: ‘I am a very great lady, but even my 
costliest jackets and trousers do not glisten like 
Mr. Si’s soft bedclothes.’ 


[181] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





“You may be sure that she looked around to 
see if he had any relatives in the other mulberry- 
trees. She discovered hundreds of brothers, each 
nibbling tender green mulberry-leaves in a per- 
fect frenzy. Never was there a family more 
comical: they would eat a few days, then sleep 
for two days; wake up, eat, sleep another two 
days. Four times they waked; and before their 
fifth sleep they made their beds exactly as their 
brother had done. 

“The Empress decided not to wait until their 
fifth awakening. She carried a few of the family 
into the palace, broke open the cradle-beds and 
gently began to wind off the shimmering bed- 
clothes. ‘I will make myself a jacket from this! ’ 
she cried. It was the first silk dress ever made. 
In 2,640 B. C.! 

“ The court ladies were simply green with envy 
until they, too, had coats and trousers made of 
silk. The court gentlemen began to beg for silk 
clothes too. Silk became so popular that the 
Emperor made an edict that only those in the 
palace might wear silk, for there is no use in 
being Emperor unless you can have something 
nobody else has! Naturally the Empress became 
very popular, she was called Si-Ling-Chi, the 


[ 182 ] 


& 


COMPLIMENTS OF THE EMPRESS 


“Goddess of the Silkworm,’ and every year in 
April there is a special feast in honor of her, a 
feast which has been held for four thousand 
years, you little brand new Americans! 

“The story goes that for two thousand years 
the Chinese emperors kept the secret of how to 
make silk, but about the year 350 B. C. a certain 
prince of India married a certain Chinese prin- 
cess. He carried her off to India with him, via 
the caravan route, and that bright little bride 
hid in her sandals and in her head-dress the eggs. 
of the silkworm and the seeds of the mulberry- 
tree; so that before long they had silk in India, 
too. History becomes quite fascinating when 
you know that Alexander the Great tried his best 
to learn the secret of silk-making; and Julius 
Cesar himself ordered silks from China for his 
Roman togas. And now you wear silk as a 
matter of course, with never a thought of Si or 
Si-Ling-Chi or even of Miss Silver Dew Drop. 
Especially Silver Dew Drop, bless her little 
Chinese heart! 

“For the silk-story is still going on in China 
today, and Dew Drop has written many chapters 
of it with years of very hard work. First here 
in our City of Clouds and later in a Shanghai 


[ 183 J 


ee 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


re re — 


factory. At home she learned to reel the silk 
from Mr. Si by hand. She placed his cocoon in 
a basin of hot water to soften the gummy threads 
which had hardened into a parchment shell. 
Then she caught together the ends of four or five 
other cocoons and reeled them off, thus making a_ 
strand of ‘raw’ silk. Perhaps you will under- 
stand why good silk is so expensive when I tell 
you that it takes 3,000 silkworms to spin one 
pound of this raw silk to make a single dress! 

“ But even yet you do not realize the full cost 
of your neckties, sashes, and hair-ribbons, for 
half of that cost was paid for you by Silver Dew 
Drop in her Shanghai factory. My Plain Gray 
Lady tells me that the little girl was a perfect 
beauty when she left town, soft cheeks like yel- 
low tea-rose petals with the pink just showing 
through, little slender hands, and a most conta- 
gious giggle. For three months she was a Blue 
Belle in our school, long before I came to China 
of course. Her parents had died, and she was 
very much unloved and unwanted in her grand- 
parents’ home. Her brother worked on a river- 
boat—Celestial Obedience is his name (the boy 
who stole Bob’s star), and one day he brought 
home a fabulous story about the wealth a girl 


[ 184 | 


COMPLIMENTS OF THE EMPRESS 


could earn in the silk factories of Shanghai. Just 
reeling silk, exactly as she did at home. The 
child ran away from home, hid in his boat, and 
went to Shanghai. 

“Immediately her life became one continuously 
cruel Turkish bath! For twelve endless hours 
every day she stood bending over basins full of 
boiling water where the cocoons were soaking. 
All the pink tea-rose color faded from her 
little yellow cheeks as the perspiration dripped, 
dripped, dripped down her face. The air was 
only steam, of course, not at all the proper stuff 
to breath all day, since it had to be kept at 118° 
for the sake of the silkworms. For the sake of 
worms! For the sake of new sashes and neckties 
and ribbons! 

“ But nothing whatever done for the sake of 
little Silver Dew Drop in her wee bound feet! 
Hot all day, freezing all night. She says thou- 
sands of little girls just like herself are trundled 
through the Shanghai streets at daybreak on 
their way to the silk-mills. Their golden lilies 
are too small for them to walk! ‘I got sick,’ she 
said to me, ‘here!’ and she thumped her little 
chest. ‘I got sick. I coughed and coughed and 
coughed. By that time I was in the room with 


[185 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





the spindles. I stood in a little alley of flying 
spindles. I had to fly too—fly here and fly there 
to watch for broken threads. Well, I had to be 
all eyes. But by and by I got too tired to be 
eyes. I got stupid. Clumsy. They didn’t want 
me any more.’ 

“* But what did you do for a living then?’ I 
asked. 

“* Oh, I stood on a corner and begged. Some- 
times I would get a penny a day. Sometimes 
four or five. Inthe factory I earned fifteen cents 
a day, so then I felt poor. I watched the river- 
boats for Celestial Obedience. Finally he came. 
He smuggled me back. But nobody wanted me 
under my family rooftree. I was a little “ lose- 
money-person.” But the Honorable Teacher 
wanted me! She gets milk for me to drink. She 
makes me sleep in the open air. She fitted up the 
little balcony on Grandmother Gate-Woman’s 
lodge especially for me to sleep on all day long. 
I’m going to get well! I’m going to be a person 
like Grandmother Gate-Woman, an inviter!’ 

“The other day in our school prayer-meeting 
Silver Dew Drop stood up and said: ‘ I’ve been 
like a silkworm all my life, bound fast in a cocoon 
of sin which I’ve spun round and round myself. 


[ 186 ] 


COMPLIMENTS OF THE EMPRESS 


Then I went to sleep. I slept five times, I guess! 
And nobody ever tried to make anything lovely 
out of me, they just let me harden. But all of a 
sudden I know there’s something with wings in 
me, and I’m starting to break through the cocoon. 
I’m going to be God’s little moth. Dm the hap- 
piest girl in China!’ 

“My dear Bob, and you my little silk-wearing 
sisters, I can’t help wondering if you won’t save 
your dimes and nickels and quarters for this 
little Blue Belle of ours. One dollar will keep her 
in school one month. There’s an old Chinese 
proverb which says ‘ Patience and a mulberry- 
leaf will make a silk dress,’ but I have a better 
proverb than that even if it is only two minutes 
old: ‘ Patience and a dollar will make a Christian 
scholar.’ How about it? 


“Your devoted sister, Cyn.” 


[ 187] 


4 


vt By Sey eh Ss 
. ' 








To illustrate the lane that was only pig-wide you will, of course, 
want two Chinese box-houses (see Chapter XI) with a pink pig 
exactly broad enough to reach from wall to wall, with Cynthia 
standing on one side and the polite Chinese gentleman on the 
other. Pink cardboard, cut double, will make an excellent pig; 
paste the two sides of the backs and heads together; then spread 
the legs apart so that he can stand. Ordinary Chinese pigs are 
quite brown and filthy from wallowing in the mud and the sewers 
all day long; so the pinkness of the Wangs’ “ good-to-love” pig 
was a wonderful advertisement to the whole street that Sunday 
was quite different from Saturday and Monday. 


mM Mi ria ttt 
LAT AL Th <> 7 te 


“When one is eating one’s own, one eats to repletion; when 
one is eating another’s, one eats until the tears run.” 


“ Better slight a guest than starve him.” 


“ Better be civil to the kitchen god than to the god of the inner 
sanctum.” 


XIV 


eee Ge LEA LeWAS AaV ACUUM 
CLEANER 


At first Cynthia called him the Pig That Was 
A Carpet Sweeper; but the more she thought 
about it, the more she knew that this would be 
most incorrect, since there was really not a sign 
of a carpet in the entire Wang house. Neither 
did it seem altogether correct to call him a Va- 
cuum Cleaner, for surely the word vacuum means 
“ nothing there’: and a great deal WAS there! 
A very great deal, at first. But after the pig had 
had time to run his grunter over the floor not a 
core nor a peel nor a paring was left: he had 
certainly left a vacuum. 

“ He ought to be patented!” she confided to 
the Plain Gray Lady. “ Imagine a cleaner that 
needs no electric attachment to make him run! 
No difficult pushing or shoving by hand! No 
saying, ‘Oh, dear, I overlooked a crumb under 
the table!’ Of his own accord the pig spies all 
the crumbs and grease-spots, and cheerfully sucks 
them in. His works never clog. His parts never 


[191] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


need oiling. Just turn him loose, and he does the 
rest!) And his trade-mark ought to be, ° Feeds 
while it cleans.’ Now I know why the Chinese 
character for home is a roof with a pig under it! ” 

Cynthia met him first on her way to eat “ late 
rice” with the Wangs. She met him while she 
was stepping gingerly through the mud of New 
Green Pea Lane. If the streets of the town were 
very narrow, the lanes were narrower still. In- 
deed, this lane was exactly pig-wide! [or his 
nice little snout nuzzled against the house wall 
on one side and his ridiculous curly-queue tail 
tickled the house wall on the other wall. He had 
made himself into a gate which nobody could 
pass. 

“ Are you a Chinese Balaam’s ass, dear Pig?” 
asked Cynthia addressing him politely, wonder- 
ing if this could be a sign for her to turn around 
and go home, for you will remember the Bible 
story of how Balaam’s ass did everything possi- 
ble to block Balaam from making a certain wrong 
journey. 

Cynthia’s pig grunted. 

Cynthia had had so many troubles poll-parrot- 
ing human Chinese that pig Chinese was doubly 
impossible to translate. “Say it again!” she 


[192] 


THE PIG THAT WAS A VACUUM CLEANER 


begged, clapping her hands, not because she ex- 
pected an answer of course, but in the hope that 
the pig might move around to see who dared to 
disturb this new lane-measuring business of his; 
‘the minute he moved, she expected to dash quickly 
past him. 

But there never was a pig less curious. He 
felt no least desire to see the newcomer. Cyn- 
thia in her best dress dared not go any nearer; 
she stood poised on a big muddy cobblestone won- 
dering what in the world to do. And then, from 
the other direction, came a knight to the rescue; 
a very grand knight in a long purple satin coat 
covered with gold dragons. He looked at the pig. 
Then he looked at the lady. He bowed: “ For- 
give me, Honorable Sister, but this is the pig of 
the Wangs. He is therefore a Christian pig. 
The new doctrine especially teaches golden deeds. 
He will surely get out of the way if you only ask 
him.” 

“T have asked him,” Cynthia bowed, “and he 
will not budge.” 

“Forgive me!” sighed the Purple Knight. 
“Forgive me. Itis very unfitting that he should 
block the Honorable Sister’s way.” He closed 
his fan and flicked the pig on the back smartly: 


[ 193 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


‘““Speedily, speedily! For the Honorable Sister 
open a very wide way.” 

Heathen or Christian, no Chinese pig could re- 
sist such a hint. He moved. Cynthia dashed to 
the cobblestone where the Purple Knight had 
stood, and the Purple Knight hurried to the cob- 
blestone where Cynthia had stood. So far, so 
good! They bowed very solemnly to each other 
over the pig’s back, and Cynthia had supposed 
this would be the end of the story. But there is 
never an end to any story in a Chinese walled 
city. 

For you will remember that she was on her 
way to eat supper with the Wangs. Mr. Wang 
had recently become a “ worshiping-God-man ” 
and had finally so influenced his old mother that 
Grandma Wang wanted to have a talk with the 
new Shepherdess. She had already had many 
talks with the Plain Gray Lady, but she felt that 
two missionaries would be none too many to ex- 
plain all the puzzling questions she had in mind. 
Cynthia was flattered to be asked, but a little 
nervous also, for so many things were hard to 
explain in new Chinese, and then of course there 
was the chop-stick side of dining out. Unless 
you have tried it you can have no idea what a 


[ 194 ] 


THE PIG THAT WAS A VACUUM CLEANER 


risky business it is to have to carry every morsel 
of food all the way from the table to your lips 
between two sticks as slippery as blunt knitting- 
needles! 

There was also a tremendous amount of bow- 
ing to be done before it was proper to be seated 
at the high square table. Tea was served in little 
cups which had no handles. Cynthia knew 
enough to pick up her cup with both hands and to 
sip the tea noisily enough to prove how much she 
enjoyed it. In the center of the table was a dish 
with a dozen little separate partitions, filled with 
walnuts, salted peanuts, candy, dried pumpkin- 
seeds, melon-seeds, and other curious things im- 
possible to name. Grandmother Wang used her 
fingers to serve Cynthia, giving her something 
from each of the little compartments. Presently 
the table was wiped off and a number of bowls 
were brought in full of things to eat which Cyn- 
thia was obliged to sample politely. There was 
pork fried in oil, and cabbage dumpling flavored 
with garlic, and of course there was rice, there 
also were meat balls swimming in gravy, and 
vegetables. The Wangs were evidently anxious 
to make a very good impression on this new 
Shepherdess! But the thing that made the real 


[ 195 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





impression was Grandmother Wang’s habit of 
serving everything to those at the table with her 
own chop-sticks. One minute she would be dip- 
ping them into her own bowl and carrying some- 
thing to her lips, the next minute—between bites 
—she would be serving Cynthia. It was the 
height of politeness, from hostess to guest! 
Cynthia wondered if this, too, was a four-thou- 
sand-year-old custom in China. 

It was in the midst of the meal that Cynthia 
saw Grandma Wang sweep some vegetables on 
the floor. Presently the oldest Aunt Wang threw 
some tough seeds on the floor. A very little 
Wang dropped half a cabbage dumpling by mis- 
take. Cynthia tried not to notice what a number 
of things were going floorward, and then she no- 
ticed the pig. Her pig! 

“Te can’t be Balaam’s ass,” she smiled. 
“He’s more like Mary’s little lamb; my! won’t 
the Wangs laugh and play when they find him 
here at their dinner-party! ” 

But not a Wang seemed astonished. Not even — 
when the pig ran his snuffling little grunter all 
over the floor and sucked in the cores, the peel- 
ings, the droppings, the crumbs. It dawned on 
Cynthia at last that he did this vacuum-cleaning 


[ 196 ] 





THE PIG THAT WAS A VACUUM CLEANER 


after every meal. “ He ought to be patented! ” 
she smiled. 

And then came the questions. Dozens of them. 
For Grandmother Wang was frankly worried 
about being a Christian. She said that she had 
burned her idols. ‘“‘I burned them but I said, 
“May you be blessed and return to heaven in 
peace.’ Was that all right? ” 

Cynthia was afraid not. 

The oldest Aunt Wang added: “ But she didn’t 
burn the kitchen god. Surely it’s best to keep it 
pasted over the kitchen-stove, isn’t it?” 

Cynthia was afraid not! “Take me out and 
let me see the kitchen,” she asked. They led her 
there, and she looked up at the little paper idol 
wondering why he seemed so necessary. 

“‘ Haven't you really ever heard the story about 
him?” asked Grandmother Wang, surprised. 
“He was once a man named Chang. He grew 
tired of his wife although she was a very good 
woman, so he put her out of the house and mar- 
ried somebody who turned out to be just as bad 
as his other wife had been good. In fact she was 
so unpleasant that he had to leave home! Mean- 
while his poor first wife, when cast outdoors, had 
had to wander sadly all over the countryside, 


[197 ] 


er 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


ee rere rere —————————e 


until suddenly she saw some shining lumps on 
the ground. She picked as many as she could 
carry and soon made her home with a lonely 
old woman; the shining lumps were pure gold! 
Well, one day along came a very miserable 
beggar. She knew at once that it was her hus- 
band, but he did not recognize her until she set 
before him a bowl of delicious noodle soup made 
as only she could make it, for she knew it was 
his favorite soup. Just then a large brass hair- 
pin fell from her hair, and he saw that it was one 
which he had given his wife. He was so over- 
come with shame to think of her serving him so 
kindly when he had treated her so badly that he 
fainted and fell into the fire. He went up in 
smoke, and ever since then he’s been worshiped 
as the kitchen god. Once a year he’s burned, 
with plenty of spirit money, so that he will give 
a good report of us in the upper air. Then we 
paste up a new god over the stove. It seems to 
me that we would hardly dare to eat if he wasn’t 
out here to guard the rice-bowls. But the other 
Shepherdess says this is wrong, that a Christian 
cannot serve two gods. What is your honorable 
opinion? ” 

I do not need to tell you Cynthia’s answer! 


[ 198 ] 


THE PIG THAT WAS A VACUUM CLEANER 


The old lady wagged her head regretfully: 
“Well, I gave up the other gods quite easily, so 
now I must give up this one, too. Golden Virtue, 
take him down! ” 

Golden Virtue took him down. She trembled 
like a leaf. 

“Tear him up! ” ordered Grandmother Wang. 

“Oh, I don’t dare!” wailed Golden Virtue. 
She trembled like two leaves! 

“Tear him up!” ordered the old lady ear- 
nestly. 

Golden Virtue tore him up. But she trembled 
like a whole aspen-tree! She trembled so much 
that two of the pieces of paper fluttered to the 
ground, and would you believe it? before she 
could pick them up the Pig Who Was A Vacuum 
Cleaner sucked them into his mouth. Cynthia 
thinks he liked the taste of the paste. 

“ Now he will have to be a heathen pig!”’ said 
little Fragrant Love, her hands clasped excitedly 
over her stomach. 

“Will he?” asked Grandmother Wang anx- 
iously,. 

“No! ” said Cynthia, settling that hard theo- 
logical question at once. “For the God who 
made you and me made the pig also.” 


[199 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





“T am glad of that,” said Grandmother Wang. 
But Fragrant Love and Golden Virtue decided to 
keep an eye on the pig. It was their firm convic- 
tion that in the course of time he would surely 
die. A pig who had eaten a kitchen god! Mercy 
on us! 

Before Cynthia went home she made a little 
calendar of Christian Sabbaths to be pasted on 
the wall, so that Sunday could come regularly to 
New Green Pea Lane. And every time Fragrant 
Love would check off a Sunday date she would 
look at the pig. 

“ Vou see, he’s a Christian pig,” she explained 
to her little heathen playmates. 

“Ts he? Why?” they asked. 

“ Well, he didn’t die from eating an idol. And 
besides, haven’t you ever noticed how we clean 
him up when Sundays come around? We 
thought perhaps we ought to. Golden Virtue 
does it one week, and I do it the next.” 

It was quite an advertisement to have a Sun- 
day pig on New Green Pea Lane! Cynthia said 
maybe that is why the Chinese written character 
for home is a roof with a pig under. 


[ 200 ] 


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It is possible to make a really gorgeous dragon from six sheets 
of red tissue paper, three sheets for each side of the body. Paste 
the paper end to end, neatly overlapping about a quarter of an 
inch. Experiment with a newspaper pattern before attempting 
to cut out the dragons from two th cknesses of the tissue paper. 
Paste these two dragons together around the margins only, so 
that the inside can fill with air. A hoop of pasteboard glued in 
the mouth will let the air in more easily. Paste white eyeballs 
and teeth in place, and paint black fins and fangs and scales in 
proper places; an orange tissue paper tongue emerging from the 
jaws will be effective. 


tt 


rm fiat 
WBA TAO AD 


“In shallow water, dragons become the joke of shrimps.” 
“It’s no use calling the tiger to chase away the dog.” 


“One hill cannot shelter two tigers.” 


XV 


A NEW ST. GEORGE BUT A VERY 
OLD DRAGON 


You cannot blame Cynthia for having some 
trouble in remembering the Chinese names of her 
Blue Belles apart when Duoi-di, Kiang-di, Liang- 
di, Hi-di, and Pau-di each meant “ Bring 
Brother,” showing how disappointed their sepa- 
rate parents had been when each particular new 
baby had been born a girl! Cynthia was always 
saying one name when she meant another, which 
the Blue Belles themselves considered quite a 
joke, although their Shepherdess seemed so dis- 
tressed each time it happened. It was because of 
this difficulty that she always thought of Hi-di as 
“ Goody-Two-Shoes” and of the little Duoi-di 
as “ George.” 

No name could have fitted Duoi-di better, be- 
cause if there was anything to be done in school 
this particular Bring Brother wanted to do it! 
Pencils to be sharpened? Errands to be run? 
Rooms to be dusted? Buttons to be sewed on? 
It was the easiest thing in the world to “ leave it 


[ 203 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


to George,” to “ let George do it.” And then, too, 
George always told the truth. Instantly! Flatly! 
Outrightly! No matter what the peril to herself! 

“ Sometimes, George,” Cynthia said, “you 
make me wonder whether there isn’t a cherry- 
tree growing in your courtyard with a hatchet at 
the foot of it.” 

George, of course, looked greatly puzzled. 
What could the dear Shepherdess mean? Or was 
she trying to say one thing and saying another? 
“A cherry-tree? A hatchet?” George repeated 
in a worried sort of fashion. “ No, Shepherdess! 
But we have a little dwarf pine and a hammer. 
Would those do? ” 

You can see for yourself that George was a 
darling, and the last thing Cynthia expected to 
do was to offer the dear child to a dangerous 
dragon. And yet she did. She did! 

_ It began one day in the sewing class when 
George had been in school only five months and 
was still a very green Blue Belle. Cynthia no- 
ticed that for once the busy George who liked to 
do everything was actually doing nothing. Just 
sitting! With folded hands! 

“Are you sick today?” Cynthia whispered 
tenderly. 


[ 204 ] 


ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 


George bobbed her polite little bow: “ Excuse 
me, Shepherdess, I am well.” 

*“ But you aren’t sewing? ” 

George looked frightened: “‘ But do I dare, to- 
. day? For today the dragon lifts his head; do I 
dare to touch a needle?” 

Cynthia wondered if she had heard correctly: 
* Dare not use a needle, Duoi-di? ” 

The eyes of George looked deep with fears, the 
voice of George fell to a ghostly whisper: “ To- 
day the dragon lifts his head, and if I used a 
needle I might stick it-into his eyes. Oh, Shep- 
herdess, surely none of us should sew today! ” 

Instantly the entire class dropped needles and 
sewing in a sudden panic! For they were all 
first-year students, and still very green. But 
Cynthia was green, too. She took her greenness 
to the Plain Gray Lady: “ What am I going to 
do? My class has gone on strike! A regular 
mutiny, not one of them will sew, and it’s all on 
account of a dragon. Have we a dragon in our 
midst? ” 

“We have!” sighed the Plain Gray Lady. 
“ He lives in great palaces under the earth, when 
he rolls over in bed there’s an earthquake, 
when it rains it’s the tears of the dragon. Utter 


[ 205 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





belief in him has kept the conservative Chinese 
from mining their coal and their iron. What? 
Tickle the dragon’s ribs unceremoniously? They 
would all be gobbled up exactly as the dragon 
gobbles up the sun every evening of his life! For 
I suppose you’ve seen the old-fashioned Chinese 
flag with its picture of the dragon swallowing the 
sun, haven’t you? Well, in such behind-the-times 
cities as this the people still cling to their old 
superstitions, and today is the day when the 
Chinese say the dragon lifts his head? Which 
means in plain English that spring has come. 
There’ll be a dragon parade in the streets to- 
night; you’ll be amazed at the gorgeous sight. 
Meanwhile suppose I go in and tell a story to 
those little strikers of yours, a well-known Chi- 
nese version of our own old English myth about 
Saint George and the dragon. Come along and 
listen.” 

The Blue Belles were looking very rebellious 
and decidedly startled. Were the Shepherdesses 
going to force them to sew? But when they 
found that it was to be a story they sat down 
meekly and listened, for who does not love a fairy 
tale? 

“Once upon a time,” the Plain Gray Lady 


[ 206 ] 


ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 


began, “ there was a terrible dragon. He snorted 
red fire from his nostrils and whipped up the 
whole landscape with the lashing of his giant 
tail.” 

The Blue Belles shivered with delight. Ah, 
this was the way to tell legends! So that cold 
chills ran up and down backbones. . . 

“And the only thing that that dragon would 
eat was a little girl. One at a time he gobbled 
them: little girls under thirteen, juicy and ten- 
der! But of course it kept the people busy feed- 
ing him with the little daughters of criminals, 
slaves, and bondservants until the supply of these 
ran out. There wasn’t oneleft. Not one. What 
to do then? ” 

More shivering by the Blue Belles. Cynthia 
could fairly read in their eyes the thoughts in 
their little minds: “ O-oh, I’m under thirteen 
years old myself! O-oh! ” 

“Now there was in that country a great tar- 
tai, the most important official to be found. A 
very pompous gentleman he was, with palaces 
and serving men and ten thousand soldiers, at the 
very least. Also he had six daughters, and the 
sixth little daughter said to herself: ‘I’m just 
Number Six. They’ve never even troubled to 


[ 207 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


give meaname. I’m so unwanted and so unim- 
portant a child that perhaps it’s for me to do 
something about this dragon!’ You see, she 
was the kind of girl who liked to do things.” 
(George looked Cynthia in the eye!) “So that 
brave little heroine asked for a dog, she asked for 
a sword, she asked for plenty of boiled rice. 
Then with the sword in her right hand and the 
bowl in her left, she led the dog toward the 
dragon’s cavern. Just one little girl, mind you, 
in little blue-cotton trousers and a little blue- 
cotton jacket, her pigtail dangling down her 
back.” 

“Just like me,” giggled Goody Two Shoes, 
nervously. 

“And me,” added George. 

“Exactly,” agreed the Plain = Gray Cag 
“ Well, when little Miss Number Six got to the 
cavern she mixed the great mound of rice with 
plenty of honey, and out crawled the dragon 
from his cave licking his horrible pink tongue all 
over his lips getting ready to enjoy the feast, 
while his horrible tail lashed down trees and 
bushes and even a pagoda. But while he was 
swallowing the rice, up dashed the dog and set 
his sharp teeth into the dragon’s neck; and while 


[ 208 ] 


ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 


the dog was chewing this neck, up dashed little 
Miss Number Six with her sharp sword and 
hacked at the dragon’s tail from behind until he 
died! ‘Then the people in that country stood 
around and marveled. ‘Just a dragon,’ they 
cried, ‘just tails and scales! We ought to have 
gotten rid of him ourselves long ago. Three 
cheers for the brave little maiden who did this 
good deed!’ And I do not need to tell you, my 
dears, that her story has been told in China from 
that day to this.” 

The Blue Belles nodded. They began to put 
two and two together: Were all dragons just tails 
and scales? Killable? 

The Plain Gray Lady said they were even less 
than that! “ They are just thoughts, that’s all 
dragons have ever been! There’s the thought- 
dragon called Superstition, for instance. He 
makes you think the air is full of evil spirits when 
there isn’t such a thing in all God’s world. He 
makes you afraid to use your needles on a day 
that’s exactly like any other day God gives you, 
all because a real dragon underneath the world 
is supposed to be lifting his head. Haven’t I told 
you who made the sky and the earth and the 
sea and the rocks underneath us? The great 


[ 209 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Lord God made every inch of the earth, every 
drop of the sea, every speck of the air. He made 
it for you to play with! There is nothing to fear 
anywhere. And the reason I have opened the 
doors of my school is because I want every one of 
you to go out some day to slay that old Supersti- 
tion-dragon.” 

The hour was over. The Blue Bells scampered 
away. But George did not scamper. Very 
thoughtfully she hunted up Amazing Grace to 
ask permission to go home to visit her family. 
Since George could not tell a lie she simply said 
impressively that it was the most important, the 
most solemn, and the most secret occasion of her 
whole life; she really must be home for it! Since 
George lived within the city walls Amazing Grace 
gave her consent; and nobody gave a single 
thought to George, because the dragon proces- 
sion was such a thrilling sight to see. 

Twenty men in gray were that dragon’s forty 
legs, so inconspicuous themselves that the gor- 
geous gold-and-scarlet beast seemed to be spraw- 
ling slowly through the air with its scaly, horned, 
and corrugated sides. It wriggled and squirmed 
and twisted and writhed in the most ferocious 
fashion as the wind rushed through its empty 


[ 210 ] 





ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 


paper body; and every few yards it turned its 
awful fiery head, opened wide its terrible jaws, 
and belched forth a hideous yelp, made of course 
by the twenty men in gray below it. Swarms of 
people thronged the streets, shouting and shoot- 
ing off firecrackers, chanting all sorts of prayers 
and petitions, and acting truly frenzied in certain 
communities; at other times the procession was 
equally gorgeous to see but not quite so wild. 
“This is China! Heathen China!” sighed 
Cynthia, and then—while she was looking—she 
saw that far down the street the dragon had sud- 
denly become one burning blazing mass. One 
moment, all flames; the next moment, a mere 
black paper shell; after which, as the wind blew 
on that shell—nothingness! Just twenty men in 
gray with twenty poles upholding—nothingness. 
“What’s happened?” “Who did this?” 
“Tt’s the vengeance of the dragon!” “ Calam- 
ity!’ “Alas! Alas!” ‘‘ Who did this?” rip- 
pled from mouth to mouth and from street to 
street. There were moans and groans. There 
were jeers and sneers. There was much confu- 
sion. And all this time on top of a certain gate- 
post perched a certain girl in blue, with her heart 
beating very fast and her hands—well! look at 


[211 ] 


i EN 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


a eee 


her hands, will you? Blistered as if by fire. 
Scorched—blackened—aching. 

“ow am I ever going to get down off this 
high perch with my hands this way?” she cried, 
with tears of pain in her eyes. 

But a hundred arms seemed to reach up toward 
her: “ She did it! She did it! She’s had a torch 
of faggots burning in her hands all evening, 
hasn’t she?” 

web hatss SO. 

“T saw her stretch out her torch to touch the 
dragon’s tail!” 

“Bring her down! Whip her! Flog her! 
Crazy child!” 

And the little girl who had wondered how she 
was ever going to get down, found a hundred 
arms reaching up to get her. They dragged her 
down crossly, rudely, roughly; life would have 
gone hard with her that night if she had not given 
a series of curious clucks: “ Ka-ch’k! Ka-ch’k! 
—Come, Fierce Dog!” 

Come he did! With such yapping and yelping 
and growling and snapping and biting that peo- 
ple were hopping ever-which-way, nursing their 
shins and their legs wherever his dreadful teeth 
or his dreadful claws had dug. Quietly the girl 


[ 212 ] 


ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 


ran off through the crowd; quietly she ran into 
empty lanes; quietly she found the queer crooked 
alleys which finally brought her to Grandmother 
Gate-Woman’s gate. She knocked and knocked. 

Then up to Cynthia’s door she ran. She 
opened it, fell inside, and lay flat on the floor. 

“ George!” cried Cynthia, startled. 

She picked up the child. Such a limp Blue 
Belle, with such burned hands! She called the 
Plain Gray Lady. They dressed the burns with 
soothing ointment, they bandaged them. George 
opened her eyes. “No good, stupid me!” she 
sighed drearily. “ Got frightened. Called Fierce 
Dog too soon. Never said Jesus could save. 
Never said Dragon couldn’t. Sorry. Sorry. 
No good!” And she fainted again. 

Cynthia looked at the Plain Gray Lady. “ Just 
what does all this mean, anyhow?” she asked. 

“T think it means a new Saint George but a 
very old dragon,” said the Plain Gray Lady 
softly, her eyes shining as she kissed the little 
bandaged hands with real reverence. “ And now 
you see, Cynthia, what stuff Chinese girls are 
made of!” 

The next morning at prayers the Plain Gray 
Lady read a wonderful verse written by Saint 


[ 213 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Paul: “ I bear in my body the marks of the Lord 
Jesus.’ But only Cynthia, Amazing Grace, and 
George understood why she read it. And George 
felt very humble: “Oh, I bungled things,” she 
sighed for the forty ’leventh time, “ I aah t once 
mention the Saviour.” 

But possibly you realize that her silence was a 
good thing, for if it had become known in town 
that a little Christian scholar had dared to spoil 
a heathen festival, I think that the Heavenly 
Education-Instilling School would have been far 
from popular. 


[ 214 ] 





By the time you finish this book you will have discovered that 
a box can make anything from a house to a wheelbarrow. This 
time it will make a fine table if you choose a bright red squarish 
box, with the bottom turned up for the table top and the red box- 
lid laid over this bottom. You can readily see that it will be 
necessary to cut away practically all of each side, leaving only 
the corners to form the legs. 

Ancestral tablets can easily be made by pushing small pieces of 
red cardboard into slits cut in the tops of pill-boxes. The Chinese 
are overwhelmed by the fear that no one is more alive than the 
dead; so every morning the son of the house must kneel, bump 
his forehead politely on the floor, and worship the tablets in which 
the spirits of the dead are supposed to reside, thus keeping the 
restless ghosts of the departed in a good humor all day; otherwise 
what harm they might do! The idol in Chapter XI will be use- 
ful for this story. 


mim primer 
AGA TH oS 7 


“ Eighteen goddess-like daughters do not equal one son with 
limp.” 


“ A stupid son is better than a crafty daughter.” 
“The pestle produces white rice, and the rod good children.” 


“Talk does not cook rice.” 


XVI 
PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


THERE is a wolf in this April Fool story, and a 
grandmother, and two small red caps: almost as 
if two Little Red Riding Hoods might appear, 
but instead of being girls they will be boys, and 
the wolf himself is going to be a far more dread- 
ful creature than either child had imagined. For 
on a certain day in April their grandmother took 
them to the temple. It had been very slow work 
for her to get there on account of her lily feet 
and her old rheumatic back. But it was the 
birthday of the special Children’s God, and she 
felt that it was absolutely necessary for her to 
go, for Heavenly Repose and Glorious Fighter 
were all the men-folks she had left in the world 
to worship her ancestral tablet when she herself 
should leave this life and go to be “a guest on 
high.” So although she was poor and feeble and 
old, she hobbled to the temple, holding a small 
boy by each hand. 

But when they were once inside the temple they 
simply bellowed with fear at the first sight of the 


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A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





idol. He was so big! His head towered half- 
away up to the ceiling! His terrible eyes stared 
in such a hideous black-and-white fashion! He 
held a giant bow and arrow in his hands ready 
to strike the enormous wolf which was up in the 
ceiling ready to spring. You would have cried, 
yourself, at the sight of those red yawning jaws, 
those sharp white teeth. 

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Glorious Fighter 
and Heavenly Repose, panic-stricken. Their 
grandmother held them with an extra tight grip: 
“Now listen to me,” she said, “this is a very 
good idol. He cares for little children, so you 
must burn your incense and make your little of- 
fering to thank him for keeping the wolf away 
from you all this last year; for how often have 
I told you that if one of you dies it is absolutely 
necessary for me to give your body to the dogs 
at once, because the dog is the nearest relative 
of the wolf; if I don’t, the wolf himself will come 
and take another child. And then who will wor- 
ship my ancestral tablet when I die? So kneel 
down quickly and get it over with.” 

Down they knelt on their trembling knees; they 
bumped their red caps on the ground, as they 
bowed far over several times; they lighted the 


[ 218 ] 





PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


joss-sticks, they said their “thank you” in the 
thinnest little voices you ever head. Then they 
rushed pell-mell from the temple, leaving their 
grandmother to hobble out all alone, mumbling 
something very curious indeed: “I’ve got one 
little girl and one little boy! One little girl and 
one little boy!” she kept telling the idol; certainly 
a peculiar thing to say when out in the open air 
were waiting two little red-capped boys. 

But perhaps you do not quite realize about the 
gods of China, what a jealous lot they are! They 
might envy a poor old grandmother with two 
grandsons—they might think it a great joke to 
let the evil spirits send illness to those sons—but 
where, oh where, in all of China was there an idol 
to bother his head about a granddaughter? Just 
a trifling nuisance, she, not worth noticing, for 
could she ever worship ancestral tablets? Of 
course not! So Granny had the bright idea of 
mumbling, “ One little girl, one little boy.” For 
even in case one boy should be taken away, there 
would still be one left to care for her tablet. She 
chuckled with amusement; this was a delightful 
joke on the gods. She decided to put an earring 
in the ear of Glorious Fighter at once and call 
him “ Silly Girl” from that day onward. Which 


[ 219 ] 






A CHINA SHEPHERDESS | 





thing she did to the great disgust of Silly Girl. 
He could not see why he had not been the brother 
to keep on being a boy. 

And then it seemed as if a little Chinese gust 
of wind decided to have a hand in their family 
affairs. At first it was just a pleasant little 
zephyr out in the mission yard watching the Blue 
Belles doing their Monday’s washing. How they 
did rub! What suds they did make! And when 
the little coats and trousers were hung on the 
line to dry what fun it was to blow the sleeves 
and legs around in the most violent gymnastics 
imaginable! But there was one little pair of pur- 
ple pantaloons not properly pinned to the clothes- 
line; in fact, not pinned at all; and when the 
zephyr changed to a full-fledged breeze it lifted 
those small purple pantaloons and sent them 
swimming through the air straight up on the 
school roof. There they flapped helplessly, while 
the breeze held its sides and laughed and laughed. 
“ Climb that roof!” it ordered. “ But I can’t!” 
gasped the pantaloons breathlessly. “ Non- 
sense!” replied the breeze, and turned itself into 
a regular gale as it wafted them up and up in the 
air, sky-rocketing them off into space like dizzy 
runaways. 


[ 220 ] 


PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


_ Far down below stood Heavenly Repose and 
Silly Girl shouting, “ Oh, see that funny purple 
kite!’ And then the Chinese gale of wind grew 
tired of its fun, or perhaps it heard a sailor on the 
river whistling to Favoring Wind Ear for a 
favorable breeze; in any case, it left those panta- 
loons in midair, and departed. 

Down they fluttered to the courtyard where 
four arms reached up to grab: “ Mine! Mine 
first!”’ shouted Heavenly Repose. “ Mine! 
Mine!” cried Silly Girl, and dashed indoors with 
his prize to show Granny. 

The old lady was worrying again: Suppose an 
earring and a new name were not enough to de- 
ceive the gods? Suppose they knew that Silly 
Girl was a boy, doing boy-things all day long? 
Just when she was worrying hardest in came Silly 
Girl with the purple pantaloons. Granny had an 
inspiration. “ Put them on!” she ordered. Silly 
Girl put them on. They were rather big for him, 
but by fastening the waistline in tucks up under 
his arms they did well enough. Granny 
chuckled: “I know! I know! I know how to 
make the gods believe you’rea girl. I'll send you 
to that girl’s school around the corner. Then 
they’ll believe it!” 


[ 221 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Silly Girl nearly died of the mortification of it. 
“ Make brother the girl and send him, Venerably 
Aged,” he begged. But Granny knew enough not 
to spoil such a bright idea half-way through it! 
She took a long string of cash and went down 
to the Street of the Seventy Honest Merchants. 
Poor as she was she bought some bangs with a 
lovely long pigtail hanging down behind, and she 
bought a bead-dangling head-band to go with it. 
“ For my granddaughter,” she announced loudly, 
to deceive any gods who might be listening. 

Poor Silly Girl! He stamped his feet and 
vowed he would not wear those foolish bangs or 
that girlish pigtail. He wriggled and squirmed 
and dodged, but Granny finally fastened them in 
place, lecturing him meanwhile on the dread in 
her heart: “ Suppose one of you died, and then 
the other died, who would take care of me? 
Gods never trouble with girls, so you will be 
safer than Heavenly Repose will ever be. So do 
be a sensible grandson. Anyhow, it needn’t be 
for long. Just until we get the gods used to the 
idea that you are a girl. That isn’t much to do 
for your grandmother, is it? ” 

Silly Girl thought that it was, but he let her 
lead him to the gate of the Heavenly Education- 


[ 222 ] 


PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


‘Instilling School. Grandmother Gate-Woman 
poked her head out: “Come on in!” she cried 
cordially. If you have ever been to the dentists 
you know how the heels of Silly Girl’s sandals 
dragged on the floor. It was Cynthia who re- 
ceived them. “ Alas!” she cried, when grand- 
mother had made her request, “there isn’t an 
inch of room in the entire school where another 
bed can be put. We've been taking new girls 
every week until now we are much too over- 
crowded. It breaks my heart to say ‘No!’” 

Silly Girl began to look much less glum. His 
heart gave a delighted flop, and he promptly 
stood up ready to depart at once. But grand- 
mother had no intention of departing—no indeed. 
She began to argue: “ What! No room for such 
a tiny little girl as mine, just a mere splinter of a 
child? And if there isn’t a vacant bed, never 
mind; I live just around the corner in the Lane 
of Wind-and-Rain, so the child can easily live 
under my rooftree; in fact I prefer it.” 

“In that case,”’ smiled Cynthia, “ I am sure we 
can arrange it nicely.” Whereupon the face of 
the new pupil got glummer than ever. These 
women! He dug his feet in the floor with rage. 

Said Cynthia: “ What a sensible and progres- 


[ 223 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


sive old lady you are! For I notice that the feet 
of your lovely little granddaughter are unbound. 
The Middle Flowery Country needs girls who 
can walk and read and be as free as boys, doesn’t 
itis 

What a terrible question! For if ever an old 
lady believed in golden lilies for girls it was this 
particular old lady. She wondered suddenly if 
she ought not to bind the feet of Silly Girl if she 
wanted to deceive the gods entirely. But it was 
too late just now, of course. ‘Ten thousand 
thanks for your worshipful care of my little no- 
good-girl,” she said, rising and bowing, pleased 
at the success of her plan. 

Cynthia rose and bowed also: “If you could 
spare Silly Girl to eat evening rice with us then 
she could get acquainted with the other girls to- 
day and she would not feel so strange in school 
tomorrow.” 

“Willingly! Willingly! ” beamed the old lady, 
enchanted at the thought that the gods could at 
once see her granddaughter being a grand- 
daughter. But Silly Girl, of course, did not 
agree. He lifted up his voice and wailed loudly 
when the well-known figure went hobbling away. 
Cynthia took him on her lap tenderly: “ There! 


[ 224 ] 


PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 





There! little girl, cheer up,” she whispered gaily, 
“you'll love us all tomorrow.” 

Silly Girl was simply furious to be cuddled! 
At hisage! Byastranger! He leaped from her 
lap like a frog and pounded her knees angrily: 
“ You let me alone! ” 

Cynthia was surprised, but exceedingly tact- 
ful: “ What a strong girl you are, Silly Girl! 
And do you mind my telling you that you are so 
much better than your name that you ought to 
have a new one! Or do you like it?” 

“T certainly don’t!” grouched Silly Girl 
crossly. 

“Well, it’s easy to change it. Fully half of 
our girls have school names which they have 
chosen for themselves. You might choose a new 
one, too.” 

“T choose Glorious Fighter,” he said promptly 
and vigorously. 

“Oh, but that’s a boy’s name,” Cynthia ob- 
jected, “and it really doesn’t sound any better to 
me than Silly Girl. Why don’t you choose some- 
thing pretty like Precious Pearl or Lily Flower or 
Jade-like Blossom “4 

Silly Girl was bubbling with rage at such sug- 
gestions, when the room began to fill up with girls 


[ 225 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


who gathered in line to wait for evening rice. 
Cynthia introduced Silly Girl to everybody, add- 
ing, “We must do all we can to make this little 
newcomer feel at home.” 

The Blue Belles nodded, and immediately 
swarmed around the embarrassed new pupil only 
to have their flattering offers of friendship sadly 
rebuffed by the irritated Silly Girl. Who wanted 
a lot of foolish girls standing around, simpering? 
He kicked everybody who came near! And when 
he kicked, one of the startled Blue Belles sud- 
denly cried: “ My Sunday-go-to-meeting panta- 
loons! She’s got on my best purple pantaloons! 
The ones I couldn’t find!’ She made a grab for 
them. 

Now it is true that Silly Girl did not in the least 
want the horrid trousers, but it would never do 
to hand them over meekly to any idiotic girl 
named Fragrant Gentility. Not he! A mere 
girl! He rushed at the mere girl, and the mere 
girl rushed at him: Cynthia had never seen such 
a whirligig as they made in the center of the 
schoolroom floor—a hundred fists seemed to 
thump a hundred backs as they pummeled and 
rolled and kicked each other. The scandalized 
Blue Belles stood frozen on the side-lines; Cyn- 


[ 226 } 


PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


thia alone had courage to rush over and separate 
the fighters. 

“For shame, Fragrant Gentility, for shame! 
To fight a poor little new girl, so much smaller 
than yourself! Stop it, this moment!” 

Fragrant Gentility hung her head. But Silly 
Girl held his upright, hurt to the core; poor little 
new girl, he? Bah! 

“Fragrant Gentility, you must come over and 
apologize to Silly Girl at once, dear.” 

Fragrant Gentility obeyed. Girls are born to 
obey in China. She stepped toward Silly Girl: 
“T am sorr ” she started, and then her eyes 
lighted on those dear pantaloons, undoubtedly her 
own because of that special little patch on the 
knee—how dared anybody wear her blessed 
Sunday-go-to-meeting pantaloons? She lunged 
straight at the lordly Silly Girl, who had been 
waiting with a smirk to receive her apology. He 
was astonished at her fierceness, he turned to es- 
cape, and Fragrant Gentility grabbed the new 
girl’s pigtail as it swung in a circle during the 
flight. But zip! to her perfect horror the new 
girl’s entire scalp came loose in her hands—pig- 
tail, bangs, and head-band! Fragrant Gentility 
nearly fainted with the horror of it. 


[ 227 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Cynthia nearly fainted also. For one awful 
moment she held her hands over her eyes and 
groaned aloud: “ Oh, Silly Girl! Oh, Silly Girl! ” 

And then, giggles, giggles, giggles! Lovely 
little Chinese Blue Belle giggles! Her eyes flew 
open and rested on Silly Girl. Under the lost 
scalp she seemed to have another complete scalp! 
What an amazing child! It took a full moment 
for the truth to dawn on her—this girl was a boy. 
And the purple pantaloons undoubtedly belonged 
to Fragrant Gentility. 

She called for the Plain Gray Lady to settle 
such a delicate question of etiquette: how did one 
treat a boy masquerading in a girl’s school? 
Evidently one treated him by leading him straight 
home to his grandmother. 

“Tt is a matter of deep regret to me that your 
granddaughter is a boy and therefore cannot be 
received into my school,” she said, bowing 
politely. 

The old woman sighed. Here she was, back 
again where she started. She put her finger on 
her lip and whispered: “Sh! Sh! Please don’t 
say it so loudly on the night air, where there may 
be more evil spirits than usual hanging around 
waiting for daylight. They will like nothing 


[ 228 ] 


PANTALOONS OUT OF THE SKY 


better than to tell all this to the gods about me 
tomorrow. Aiya! Aiya! Was there ever such 
an unlucky old woman as I? Only two men-folks 
left to worship my tablet, and suppose something 
happened to both of them, where would I be? 
AivatexAl:yal’ 

“Oh!” sighed the Plain Gray Lady softly, 
beginning to see that this had been no April Fool 
prank on her school, but a desperate heart-broken 
old woman afraid for her future. “Do not 
grieve,” she said gently, “you look as if you 
would live dozens of years yet, and the little boys 
are quite husky; and as for me, I live in China 
especially to bring good news to such as you. 
May I not come every afternoon and tell you 
slowly about this comfortable news? ” 

“Oh, come often! Come often! Ive tried 
everything else. But tell me slowly. Tell me 
slowly! Tell me now! I can’t wait till tomor- 
row.” 

The Plain Gray Lady went without her eve- 
ning rice that night; and when she went to bed 
she said to herself with a smile that she was glad 
“the wind bloweth where it listeth,” especially 
when it brought pantaloons out of the sky. 


[ 229 ] 


. 








Poor Granny! In spite of having everything planned so com- 
pletely in her own mind, she was in sad doubt about her funeral! 
You can act it all out very dramatically by making paper horses 
with paper servants and a paper house to be carried through the 
streets in her funeral procession: when the grave is reached, burn 
the horses, the servants, the house, to show how she wanted 
these comforts sent on into the spirit world ahead of her. It 
will seem so very useless and pathetic and heathen that you 
will be sure to love the end of the story even better than before. 


miu mateorr 
ADBAMLOnt 


, 


“Get the coffin ready, and the man won’t die.’ 
“A dry finger cannot lick up salt.” 


“ He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.” 


XVII 
GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 


Very red. And very big. And very shiny. 
And very empty. Many, many times that day 
Granny had hobbled over on her lily-toes to peer 
inside it. She was dreadfully proud of it! It 
was so very handsome, so very expensive, and so 
very red. Red in China stands for good-luck, 
for happiness. Granny felt that it made her 
house a grand place indeed to have anything so 
gorgeous in the best room—she boasted about it 
to her neighbors, and she went so far as to send 
for Cynthia. 

“* Over-the-ocean woman,” she said, “I want 
you to see the fine present my son has just given 
me. Honorably step this way!” 

Cynthia stepped. And there stood the coffin, 
only she was not quite sure whether it was really 
a coffin or not—it might be just a chest for stor- 
ing clothes. But when she looked inside it seemed 
to her that she had never seen anything so very, 
very empty! She was more shocked than she had 
ever been in her whole life: she felt too sorry to 


[ 233 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





say a word. Granny however talked enough for 
two: 

“Isn’t it beautiful? So red! And costing so 
much. It just shows what a good son I have and 
how much he thinks of me.” 

“Oh! Does it?” Cynthia gasped. 

“Why of course it does! A careless, inatten- 
tive, unloving son might wait until the very last 
moment to buy his mother a coffin. Why, I’m 
tickled to pieces! I wish you could see the cheap 
affair old Mrs. Ming has in her house, have you 
ever seen it? She lives on the Street of the 
Twelve Red Rubies. I tell you, the old lady was 
quite ashamed of hers when she saw mine. And 
as for the mother of Mr. Huong next door, she 
will really die of envy if he doesn’t get her one 
like mine. But do sit down; sit here, I beg of you. 
I have been very rude not to offer you a seat at 
once.” 

“ This is much too high a seat,” Cynthia ob- 
jected politely, for you will remember that the 
chairs near the ancestral tablets were too honor- 
able to be sat on until one had been urged at least 
three times. Cynthia, you see, had charming 
Chinese manners! 

But for once her hostess did not care at all for 


[ 234 ] 


GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 


ceremony; she fairly pushed Cynthia into the 
chair: “ Please do not use up the air in idle talk,” 
she begged, “ there’s no time to waste. Somehow 
I feel very queer today. I suppose it’s because 
I’m so happy over my beautiful coffin.” 

“Yes,” agreed our China Shepherdess, “ I can 
see that it might make you feel queer. It even 
makes me feel queer! But lam glad that you are 
also so happy over it.” 

“Oh, very happy,” repeated Granny in the 
solemnest voice you ever heard. “ Very happy. 
Only—well!—you see, I’m such a little old wo- 
man and it’s such a very big coffin. All last night 
I kept thinking how very dark and lonely it would 
be inside. I could even hear the howling.” 

“ The howling? ” Cynthia asked. 

The old lady looked astonished. Was it possi- 
ble that white people did not even die in the same 
way that yellow people died? ‘“ Yes, yes! the 
howling of my funeral procession as it will be 
when my friends go to call one of my three souls. 
Perhaps you don’t know, though, that when a 
person dies one of those three souls goes straight 
- to the temple to stay until the funeral, then the 
friends carry an empty sedan-chair to call the 
soul back. I suppose they always do come back! 


[ 235 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





I worried about it all night, for just suppose my 
soul didn’t come back. I worried too for fear 
my son had spent so much money on the coffin 
that he might skimp on my spirit house, my spirit 
furniture, my spirit cook, and the other spirit 
servants.” 

Cynthia, poor girl, looked more puzzled than 
ever. She had to ask what in the world a “ spirit 
cook ”’ was. 

Granny, in her turn, looked puzzled: “ What? 
Haven’t you seen the shop on the Street of the 
Seventy Honest Merchants where they make 
paper houses and paper life-sized images of ser- 
vants and horses to be burned at the grave so that 
those who go as ‘guests on high’ will have 
houses and furniture in the spirit world. Ai ya! 
how would I ever get along if he forgot all this? ” 

Cynthia was speechless! 

“I don’t suppose he could possibly forget to 
buy the huge paper image to go ahead of the pro- 
cession and act as Mandarin Guide. He may be 
a busy man, but my son has lots of common sense. _ 
Just the same, I got to worrying for fear he 
wouldn’t remember to guard the living as well as 
to take care of me when I’m a guest on high. 
For I’m the mother of sons and grandsons, and 


[ 236 ] 





GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 





Ikeep reminding this oldest boy of mine that the 
day of a funeral must never fall on a day of the 
same name as the birth year of any member of 
the family, or a second death will happen in the 
family right away. The soothsayers aren’t al- 
ways as wise as they pretend! They might get 
the wrong date so easily. But I’ve been warning 
my daughters-in-law that if this should happen 
then the priest must be asked to make a straw 
image by binding twelve rice-stalks together, for 
if he buries this in the coffin it will be a substitute 
for the person who would otherwise have to die. 
Well, now you know a few of the things that 
make it so dangerous to die! ” 

Cynthia said gently: “ I don’t like to have you 
worry over things like that; didn’t you know I 
had come to China especially to tell you 2 

But the old lady interrupted her: 

“You are young! What could you tell me? 
And besides I haven’t told you half my troubles 
yet, because I’m a good bit of a Buddhist, and 
it’s quite possible that when I die I may be turned 
into an animal of some sort and be sent back to 
earth to live through any number of other births 
—a cat, a dog, a frog, a mosquito: how do I know 
what I may become? It seems to me that there’s 


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A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





too much for me to worry about, entirely too 
much. I’m very tired of worrying! ” 

“T should think you would be! And you really 
must let me say what I started out to tell you, that 
I came to China especially to bring you the good 
news that Jesus Christ has already made every 
possible preparation for you. He hasn’t for- 
gotten anything. He has written it all down in 
this letter to you. Listen: ‘ Let not your heart be 
troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in 
God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house 
are many mansions, if it were not so I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And 
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I 
am, there ye may be also.’ ” 

Granny shook her head: “ That isn’t about me. 
I don’t know that God. I never worshiped at His 
shrine. I never gave Him an offering. He 
wouldn’t go to all the trouble of fixing up a man- 
sion for an old woman who never had paid a bit 
of attention to Him! I knew these gods—there 
isn’t one of them that really cares.” 

Cynthia took Granny’s hand: “ You honorably 
forget what I’ve told you every time I’ve come 
to call. You forget that this God made you! So 


[ 238 ] 


GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 


of course He knows you! Of course He has your 
mansion ready! He promised, you know.” 

“Just tell me that all over again,” mumbled 
Granny. “ I’m only a stupid old Chinese woman, 
and I didn’t sleep last night. You read me all 
over again what your Father God said.” 

Cynthia read it again. Granny sighed: “It 
doesn’t seem possible He means me. Read it just 
once more! ” 

Cynthia read it once more. 

“Dear me!” sighed Granny, “ wouldn’t it be 
fine if it were really meant for me. But there 
are so many gods, I could never be sure of know- 
ing yours.” 

Cynthia told her a story. “I have a friend. 
She married a missionary. They lived across 
many oceans from their old home. They had a 
baby, but the baby fell ill; the mother had to take 
the baby back across those many oceans to her 
own home. But she kept thinking, ‘ I mustn’t let 
Molly forget her father.’ So every morning she 
held Molly before her husband’s picture and 
taught her to lisp, ‘Good morning, father!’ 
Every single day for three years she did this, until 
finally the time came when the father could come 
home also. He reached the house sooner than he 


[ 239 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





was expected and his wife was out, but in the 
nursery was little Molly playing on the floor. He 
was afraid to go in for fear the sight of a 
strange man might frighten her, but just then she 
looked up and the happiest little smile went over 
her face as she ran forward to meet him, calling, 
‘Good morning, father!’ Oh, Venerable Grand- 
mother, that’s all death is: Some morning you 
will look up and find God standing in the door- 
way to the other life, and the minute you see His 
dear face you will drop everything and hurry to 
Him, crying, ‘Good morning, Father, good 
morning!’ ” 

The old lady had been nodding her head all 
through the story: “ Molly wasn’t scared! I 
mustn’t be scared! But Molly knew that picture 
by heart; but I—how should I know what God 
is like? ”’ 

“His picture is in every story in the Bible,” 
Cynthia said. 

Granny laid her wrinkled old hands on the 
Bible: “ Then just let me see quickly! Quickly! 
There’s no time to lose.” 

Cynthia had a Blue Belle living under that 
rooftree; and if you had-been in China you could 
have seen, day after day, the loveliest sight in 


[ 240 ] 


GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 


all the world, I think: frail old Granny peering 
carefully at the words she could not read while 
the Blue Belle spelled through the Bible stories 
slowly for her. 

“Do you begin to see God any plainer?” she 
would ask anxiously. 

“Well yes, I think I do,” Granny would say, 
“it seems as if even an old woman couldn’t be 
afraid of a God-Who-Healed-The-Sick-At-Sun- 
set-time. That was such a good thing to do.” 

The youngest grandson piped up curiously: 
“But only yesterday you said you’d know Him 
anywhere because He was the God-Who-Blesses- 
Little-Children.” 

“So I did! So I did!” Granny nodded. 
“There never was a God before who bothered 
with a little child.” 

“A child like me? ” asked the grandson. 

“A child like you,” nodded Granny. 

* And a child like me! ” the Blue Belle added, 
with a great pride in the God who loved girls as 
well as boys! 

“Granny has a new smile-face!”’ every one 
said. 

“ Of course I have,” Granny beamed, “ and it’s 
going to keep on being gladder yet because I’ve 


[ 241]. 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





found out that I’m not going to turn into a frog 
or a dog or a cat or a mosquito when I die. 
Father God has told me so in His Letter to me. 
Read me what it says once more.” 

The Blue Belle read: “ For we know that when 
He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we 
shall see Him as He is.” 

You can see for yourself that peace and happi- 
ness were coming to Granny. Somehow the 
empty coffin did not matter at all; for warm, 
sweet, tender, like a friend, the face of “‘ Father 
God ” emerged from those dear Bible stories. So 
that at dawn one Easter Sunday it was altogether 
natural for her to close her poor tired eyes and 
breathe her happy greeting: “Oh, good morn- 
ing, Father, good morning! ” 

“And she wasn’t a bit frightened,” the little 
Blue Belle told Cynthia; “ father is keeping very 
quiet about letting you plan a Christian funeral 
just as Granny wished.” 

The relatives were never so startled, so upset, 
so puzzled, so impressed as when the Chinese 
pastor read from the Book which Granny had 
loved: “I am the resurrection and the life. . 
Though a man die, yet shall he live. . . O death, 
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy vic- 


[ 242 ] 


GRANNY’S COFFIN WAS VERY RED 


tory? But thanks be to God which giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Surely you will like to sit in church next Easter 
Sunday morning remembering that it is in ways 
like this that the Saviour spreads His resurrec- 
tion story round the world: from Granny’s house 
to Neighbor Huong’s, from Neighbor Huong’s 
to Mrs. Ming’s, from Mrs. Ming’s to other homes 
all over town, until the whole earth shall be full 
of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. 


[ 243 ] 








When you make this pedler to show in your class, cut two 
pedlers from heavy cardboard, cutting the bamboo pole double 
also. Then paste the heads, shoulders, and poles together. Be 
sure to cut the soles of the feet very flat and as large as possible, 
so that when the two sets of legs are spread apart the pedler can 
balance himself and his bundles. Miniature bucket and basket 
should be tied on each end of the pole; use deep pill-boxes or the 
small circular tin containers for adhesive tape, dental floss, etc. 
For this story you may want to use the house (Chapter XI), 
the idol (Chapter XI), and all the Blue Belles (Chapters IX 
and X). 


mw riatesrn 
LATO A TH aS 1 


“When the market is brisk the seller does not stop to wash 
the mud from his turnips.” 


“If you believe in gambling you will have to sell your house.” 


“Tf you want your children to lead a quiet life let them always 
be a little hungry and cold.” 


XVIII 


THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG 
CRY-BABY 


Tuis is the story of the baby who ended by 
having 101 mothers; although in the beginning 
she had only one, of course, just the same as any 
ordinary child. You will be astonished to know 
that when Cynthia first saw her she thought she 
was going to turn out to be a bucket of water or 
a vegetable; but that was not on account of her 
infantile looks, but on account of the peculiar 
baby-carriage in which she was taking the air on 
that lovely May day when a certain pedler saw 
Cynthia coming down the street and hurried to 
meet her. 

I think he was probably saying to himself in 
Chinese, “ These queer over-the-ocean persons 
have soft hearts, maybe she will want to buy of 
me.” For the softness of the Plain Gray Lady’s 
heart had become known here and there all over 
town, and it was only natural to hope that Cyn- 
thia might be the same sort of strange being. 

Apparently she was not inclined to softness; 


[ 247 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


for after glancing at the bamboo pole over his 
shoulder with a bucket of water splashing at one 
end and a basket of vegetables at the other, Cyn- 
thia said, “‘ Not buying today! ” 

The pedler lowered his burdens carefully on 
the street and smiled a mysterious smile: 
“ Honorable Lady, slowly stay! Slowly listen! 
Let me show you one little vegetable that can 
laugh—yes? One little vegetable that can cry 
—yes? One little good-enough-to-eat vegetable! 
A little potato with eyes that can see! ” 

Of course this sounded odd, to say the least! 
Cynthia’s left foot lingered while her right foot 
started on. 

The pedler hastily brushed aside the vegetables 
on top of his deep basket, and there—if you 
please!—lay something that had little arms, little 
legs. Needless to say, both of Cynthia’s feet 
stood planted firmly in the street, and she could 
hardly get breath enough to say, “ Do you mean 
to tell me that you are selling that baby? ” 

The pedler shrugged his shoulders: “Just a 
cheap little potato! Cheap! Very cheap! ” 

Cynthia wanted to cry. She was sure she was 
asleep; yet when she pinched herself she found 
she was awake. Wide awake! She wanted to 


[ 248 ] 





THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 





shake the dreadful man. “Is it a girl?” she 
asked. He nodded, and repeated his “ cheap little 
vegetable ” harangue. 

“ How much? ” Cynthia asked. 

His eyes gleamed. He held up a few fingers 
to show how many strings of cash he wanted; in 
our money about three dollars. Cynthia could 
not, of course, carry heavy strings of Chinese 
money around with her, so she asked the pedler 
to come back to the mission at once, and she 
would pay him. She did not even bargain with 
him. “Soft! Soft!” he chuckled contentedly, 
as he dumped the vegetables back on the baby 
and swung his pole over his shoulder again. 

“Tve bought a baby!” Cynthia cried to 
Grandmother Gate-Woman excitedly. “ Don’t 
you let this man get away till I’ve paid him!” 

She rushed up-stairs for the money. Grand- 
mother Gate-Woman pushed aside the vegetables 
and lifted out the baby, looking shrewdly at the 
weazened little cheeks, the skinny arms. “It’s 
no sort of a baby at all,” she said to Cynthia, “it 
isn’t fat, and it isn’t strong. It isn’t anything a 
baby should be. Now, Shepherdess, don’t you go 
buying a no-good baby!” 

But Cynthia paid the pedler and closed the gate 


[ 249 | 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


on him! “ You ought to be ashamed of yourself, 
selling babies this way! ” 

“ Think what a glorious foster-mother I have 
fetched it!” said the pedler piously, and walked 
off chuckling. | 

Cynthia picked up her Boughten Baby anx- 
iously, while Grandmother Gate-Woman wagged 
her head in melancholy fashion. Even the Plain 
Gray Lady looked depressed: ‘‘ It’s so sick, dar- 
ling, so thin and pitiful! And I don’t know a 
thing about bringing up babies.” 

“Don’t you, indeed?” asked Cynthia. “ Well, 
that needn’t worry us, for ’ma dabster at babies. 
Haven’t I brought up four little sisters and one 
little brother; mercy on us! What’s one 
Boughten Baby more or less to me? And now 
for a bath, you little wail-bone! ” 

The Plain Gray Lady said that the Blue Belles 
ought to be called in: “For they’re all older 
sisters, too, and who knows but that your 
‘Boughten Baby’ may do as much good in town 
as our school.” 

“ Goody gracious,” chuckled Cynthia into the 
baby’s ear, “ ain’t that lady expectin’ just entirely 
too much of a muchness from you, Miss Wail- 
bone?” The Boughten Baby bellowed “ Yes!” 


[ 250 ] 


THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 


‘Cynthia filled a little tub with hot water. She 
dipped her finger in it carefully to test it. She 
undressed the baby. The Blue Belles stood 
around with their eyes as round as saucers: “O 
Shepherdess,” they begged, “don’t wash the 
baby! You will boil her, and she is not a vege- 
table! She will die! We never, never wash the 
babies in our homes.” 

“Don’t you?” hummed Cynthia blissfully, 
undressing her baby. 

“Truly yes, Shepherdess,” echoed Grand- 
mother Gate-Woman from the doorway, “ she 
will die, if you boil her like that. Think of the 
babies born under my rooftree, not one of them 
ever washed! Oh desist! ” 

“ Nevertheless,” said Cynthia firmly, “ I expect 
to wash her every day,” and into the tub went 
the baby. There are no words to print that in- 
fant’s roar of rage and astonishment. The Blue 
Belles stood wringing their hands and saying in 
a sing-song chorus: “ Alas! Alas! She boils the 
baby! ” 

Grandmother Gate-Woman pattered back to 
her gate where the Plain Gray Lady heard her 
praying: “ Now Father God, please forgive the 
young Shepherdess for making it such a clean-to- 


[251 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


death baby. Help her to know better tomorrow, 
Father God. Amen.” 

Surely you can understand from this why 
many heart-felt prayers are left unanswered; for 
Cynthia knew that baths were very Christian 
things and as good for boughten babies as for 
any other kind! Yet the next morning when the 
Blue Belles saw the tub being filled they implored 
her earnestly: “ Teacher, do not wash her again! 
You washed her only yesterday, that ought to 
keep for a month, for a year, for a long, long 
time! Oh, please don’t boil her again.” 

‘““A bath a day keeps the doctor away,” sang 
Cynthia blithely, as she dipped the baby expertly. 
The Blue Belles simply ached over it: George 
flunked in every class all day. The Five Little 
Peppers dashed home and told their mother. 
Their mother told their aunts. Their aunts told 
their neighbors. Their neighbors told their 
neighbors. News of the clean-to-death baby 
spread from street to street in that end of town, 
and a great many mothers came to call. A great 
many mothers went home to wonder. 

“How is that clean-to-death baby today?” 
people asked the moment they met and had said 
their polite “‘ Have you eaten your rice?” 


[ 252 ] 


THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 


“Eaten full, thank you. Well, I hear it’s get- 
ting to be a good-enough-to-love baby; you can’t 
believe all you hear, though; I thought I’d stop 
and ask that old gate-woman as I passed.” 

Presently they were saying: “She feeds it 
buffalo milk; did you ever hear that babies liked 
milk?” 

“Absurd!” said some. “ Improper!” said 
others. But that was nothing compared with 
what Buffalo Bill said when Cynthia begged him 
to try milking a buffalo cow. Begging him was 
as hard as begging the cow; for neither she nor 
any of her sister cows had ever heard of being 
milked. They kicked Buffalo Bill till he was 
black and blue; but he nobly stuck to his job, 
simply because that silly over-the-ocean woman 
had warmed his heart. 

So the Boughten Baby grew round and plump 
and very pleasant, a credit to bottles and baths. 
Her 101 mothers hung over her adoringly, and 
boasted day and night of her charms and her per- 
fectly appalling cleanliness. Yet all this time 
Cynthia kept remembering the one real mother 
somewhere in town, with empty aching arms. 
She used to go to listen to the women praying to 
Kwang-Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, who has so 


[253 | 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


many hundred hands that it is no wonder she is 
supposed to have power to protect from sorrow. 
There they would kneel, those women, and it was 
something like this each one said: “ Great Mercy, 
great pity, save from misery, save from evil, 
broad, great, efficacious, responsive Kwang- Yin.” 
Cynthia used to ask the women what their trou- 
ble was, and she often sent Grandmother Gate- 
Woman on a similar errand to that temple. One 
day the old woman said as usual, “ Excuse my big 
rudeness, but could I help your ” 

“T can hardly believe my ears! ” exclaimed the 
younger woman, and urged by the friendly old 
soul she poured out the whole story of her mis- 
fortunes: How three men came to sit under the 
family rooftree day after day to gamble with her 
husband. She tiptoed past the room on house- 
hold errands, yet the only sounds that ever broke 
the silence were the occasional rattling of dice, 
the occasional clattering of the bamboo-and-ivory 
Mah Jong pieces on the table; sometimes a man 
said, “ Pung! ” and sometimes he said, “ Chow! ” 

** All day they do, and all night. The solemnest 
men in all the Middle Flowery Country, they 
never laugh, they never smile; you could not pos- 
sibly tell from their faces what they are thinking, 


[ 254 ] 


THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 


and that is why I never guessed that my husband 
was losing until little by little his debts grew too 
big. He sold the red-lacquered chairs. But that 
was not enough. He sold the red-lacquered 
tables. Still not enough. He sold the old porce- 
lain vases, centuries old. Not enough yet! He 
sold the copper pots, the old brass urns. Not 
enough. He sold the dishes. Not enough. 
Never, never enough. He sold and sold and sold, 
until there was not enough rice in the rice-pot, 
and my sons’ faces grew pinched with hunger. 
My baby grew sick, so sick that I felt sure she 
had lost one of her three souls.” 

“What did you do?” asked Grandmother 
Gate-Woman. 

The little mother told how she went out on 
the street at sunset-time with the baby’s jacket, 
how she waved it and waved, calling frantically: 
“ Come back, little lost soul, come back! Come 
back! Come back!” For of course she felt sure 
that if the lost soul could once see the familiar 
little jacket it would long to slip inside and go 
indoors contentedly. But she waved and waved, 
she called and called; and when she went back in 
the house the baby also was gone—gambled away 
by its father. 


[255] 


— 
A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 








Grandmother Gate-Woman said cautiously: 
“We have a baby under our rooftree. A little 
good-to-love baby. Come with me and see her.” 
But, of course, she never suggested that it might 
be this mother’s baby. She led the way to the 
school and up to the improvised nursery where 
the Boughten Baby was busily trying to get all 
her toes into her mouth. “Just look at this 
baby!” proudly boasted Grandmother Gate- 
Woman. 

The baby-less mother gave one surprised look, 
then picked up the baby hungrily. When Cynthia 
came in she knew at once that nobody but the 
real mother could croon like that, or hug like that. 
“Oh dear! Oh dear!” cried Cynthia to herself, 
“ she'll take my Boughten Baby home with her.” 
And her own heart nearly broke—to think of 
missing those quaint bias eyes, those cunning 
clutching fingers! But the mother shook her 
head: “It’s my baby, but how could I take her 
home to my rooftree? How could I hide her — 
from her father? How could I feed her, when 
even my sons are hungry? Oh, no, I cannot take 
my baby, ever! Oh my precious jewel! My lit- 
tle ten thousand ounces of gold! U’m! U’m! 
U’m!” 

[ 256 ] 


THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 


' Cynthia wiped her eyes: “I'll always be just 
as good as I know how to be to your baby,” she 
said simply. 

“Oh, I see your goodness sticking out all over 
my baby already,” said the mother, poking the fat 
little cheeks and the dimpled elbows. ‘“‘ You are 
better with babies than Iam! And yet I did well 
by my girl! J treated her just like her brothers. 
Why, on the day when I first took her to see my 
own parents, I daubed some soot from the bottom 
of the rice-pot on her forehead; for the pot is 
iron, and the soot could be a charm to give her 
boldness against all sorts of demons. And when 
she entered her second year I even let her choose 
her career. But this, of course, was foolish of 
me, wasn’t it?” 

Cynthia hated to admit it: “ You see, I don’t 
know what you mean? ” 

* Oh, don’t you? Why, I put on the floor be- 
side her a big basket full of twelve objects— 
things like a book, a suit of clothes, a piece of 
money, bread, a pair of scissors, seeds, abacus, 
andsoon. My next-to-the-youngest boy grabbed 
the seeds from the basket when we let him chose 
his career; so of course we know he will be a 
farmer when he grows up. But girls can’t have 


[257] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


careers, and I think I did wrong to let this little 
baby try her luck in secret.” 

“What did she choose?” Cynthia asked, 
amused. 

The Mah Jong Baby’s mother looked a bit 
ashamed: “ S-she c-chose a b-book!” she stam- 
mered, “Just fancy! That ought to mean she’s 
going to be a scholar; but of course a girl could 
never be a scholar! I’m afraid I angered the © 
gods.” 

But Cynthia was patting the cheek of the 
Boughten Baby: “A scholar? But of course 
she’s going to be a scholar, she’s begun already. 
It was on account of her we opened our mission 
kindergarten last month, because so many moth- 
ers came to inquire about their babies that we 
offered to take their four-year-old children in 
school every morning. Oh, yes, rest your heart! 
She’ll be a scholar! ” 

About the time of parting there are no words 
with which to tell. Cynthia left them alone for 
a while; an hour later Grandmother Gate- 
Woman came in to say: “ You will havea thanks- 
giving in your heart over what that mother said 
of you, Shepherdess! You see, I was telling her 
all about Father God: how kind He is, how He 


[ 258 ] 





THE MOTHER OF A MAH JONG CRY-BABY 





seeks the lost, and even has a special Home up- 
stairs in heaven for us all. I thought maybe she 
couldn’t believe at first; how can any of us poor 
Chinese take it in quickly? It is so good! But 
the baby’s mother said to me, ‘ Why shouldn’t I 
believe, when up-stairs in Heaven today I saw 
your Father God’s wife taking care of my baby!’ 
Now, Shepherdess, excuse me, but I think it’s 
quite a lovely thing to have her call you Father 
God’s wife—His ‘Walk Behind’: Father God 
leads, you follow!” 

Once upon a time somebody said: “ God could 
not be everywhere, and so He made mothers.” 
But I think you will agree with me that this is 
hardly a true statement, since God is everywhere; 
and for the lands where the mothers need Him 
the most He has made—missionaries! 


[259 ] 





\ 
he 





You will want to make a red sedan bridal chair in which 
Goody Two Shoes can ride to her mother-in-law’s house; dress 
one of the Blue Belles in a red paper bridal dress with a red 
bridal veil covering her head and face. Lift her over a make- 
believe fire on the door-sill and have her bow the correct number 
of times to all the necessary persons and “ spirits.” 

You will want to have a camera on hand, of course, to take 
a pretend-picture of the group of the Tsao family reading; and 
as a surprise to all who hear your story, you might end by dis- 
tributing to them a “ snap-shot ”—strips of blue paper each with 
a picture of a Chinese person pasted on it. A search through 
old missionary magazines will bring all the pictures you need. 
Underneath each picture you might print a different Chinese 
proverb from among those given in this book, and have them read 
aloud; or, better yet, print the name of a Chinese city where you 
have a school or hospital of your very own. 


niin mist on 
AWA TAO AT 


“An ugly daughter-in-law cannot conceal that fact from her 
mother-in-law.” 


“Shoes made by the elder brother’s wife are a pattern for the 
younger brother’s wife to copy.” 


“Tf there is no oil in the lamp the wick is wasted.” 


XIX 


GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER- 
IN-LAW 


THERE had been one of the ten new Blue Belles 
who did not tinkle and ring true—Hi-di, the little 
Bring Brother girl who had sobbed that if her 
feet were unbound she would never get a mother- 
in-law. Cynthia had worried over that girl more 
than over all the other nine; indeed, that is what 
the Good Shepherd once did with His ninety-and- 
nine—the fact that they were all safe in the fold 
made Him all the more anxious to find the one 
little lost sheep. 

Goody Two Shoes seemed to be the little odd 
sheep among the Blue Belles. She used to sit and 
stare at her big unbound feet soberly: “ Ugly! 
Ugly!” she would groan. “Tl never marry a 
mother-in-law with feet like these!” (For in 
China a girl does not speak of marrying a hus- 
band but always of marrying a mother-in-law, 
the reason for which you shall soon see.) 

“She’s nothing but a stolid, solid little lump 
of Chinese clay!” sighed Cynthia. “ She hasn’t 


[ 263 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





been molded or shaped into anything at all during 
any of these days of school.” Aloud she said: 
“Good shoes! Good feet! Sensible! Com- 
fortable! Pretty!” 

Goody Two Shoes moaned: “ Excuse me, 
rudely speaking. Ugly feet! My life is ruined.” 

This was really rather funny, and of course 
very foolish; so one day Cynthia said in an off- 
hand fashion: “I do wish somebody would tell 
me the story of the famous Peking Bell! I’ve 
been waiting for some one to tell me ever since I 
came to China.” 

“T can tell it!’ boasted Goody Two Shoes, 
eagerly, and told the well-known Chinese legend 
of the old bell-maker who was having trouble in 
casting a great bell. He made it once, but it came 
out imperfect. He made it twice, and it came out 
imperfect again. So finally he called in a sooth- 
sayer who, after much wise hemming and haw- 
ing, said that his luck would never turn unless a 
maiden would mix her blood with the molten 
mass of metal. Then the bell would be perfect! 
In order to help her father, without a moment’s 
hesitation, the bell-maker’s young daughter 
plunged straight into that seething, bubbling, 
boiling vat; and, as she plunged, a workman 


[ 264 ] 





GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 


caught at her shoe and pulled it off. The bell was 
a perfect success, but to this very day every stroke 
that it strikes is followed by a low wailing note 
like the Chinese word for shoe (hsieh) which is 
said to be poor Ko Ai calling for her lost shoe! 

“ Ah, my dear little Goody Two Shoes,” Cyn- 
thia said, “ you are to be just another Ko A1. 
Perhaps you too can find a way—a Christian way 
to make your father’s life a success. Or perhaps 
it is your country which you are to save by spend- 
ing your life sacrificially wherever you go, for 
there are so many people with broken bits of trou- 
ble to be mended, broken thoughts to be put to- 
gether to form a whole. Throw yourself in and 
mend something, dear girl! Don’t just sit wail- 
ing for your little lost shoes, your useless little 
golden lilies! We’ve given you two big good new 
feet so that you can do a big good new piece of 
work for China. Do it, my dear!” 

Goody Two Shoes looked very glum and 
moody. She had liked telling the story, but she 
certainly did not like having the story applied to 
herself. Little she dreamed how soon she her- 
self was going to be thrown into a whole new set 
of circumstances as seething and bubbling as the 
bell-maker’s boiling metal. For one day, after 


[ 265 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


only seven months of school, her father came 
with a sedan-chair to carry her to her home in the 
next town. There was to be a wedding in the 
family, he said, and he thought she had better 
come home for the celebration. 

Goody Two Shoes was greatly excited herself, 
and as for the other scholars their little blue- 
cotton trousers were dancing here and there all 
over the school as the Blue Belles cried: “ Think 
of all the wedding-cakes Hi-di will have! The 
salted nuts! The rich meat balls! The pud- 
dings! The candy! Lucky Hi-di! ” 

“No, lucky me!” grinned George in her sensi- 
ble fashion. “ I’d rather stay in the lesson-learn- 
school and store my stomach with learning.” 

“So would I!” echoed Jasmine Flower. 

“And I!” repeated Luminous Jade. 

Off rode Goody Two Shoes in her sedan-chair, 
a-little glad and a little sober. But when she 
reached home she was altogether sober, for would 
you believe it? The wedding was to be her own! 
She could hardly believe her ears. 

“Cannot! Cannot!” she cried. “I ama 
school-goer—over the hills in that school there is 
my own bed-board with its little blue quilt—there 
is my own primer with its words of wisdom— 


[ 266 ] 





GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 





' there is my own rice-bowl—my own chop-sticks 


99 





“Be still, you big-footed little piece of bag- 
gage!” scowled her mother crossly. ‘“ If we had 
dreamed that that school would unbind your 
golden lilies we would never have sent you there. 
Never! You have no idea how quiet we have 
had to keep about those feet of yours—not a word 
to the go-between! He knew what your feet 
were like before you went away, and has doubt- 
less reported them to your mother-in-law as three 
inches long. You must keep them hidden as 
much as possible just at first, you unfortunate 
big-foot girl! We have boasted at great length 
of your learning, however, so that the go-between 
got many extra strings of cash from the family ir 
order to buy such a scholarly daughter-in-law.” 

“Not a scholar! Not a scholar!” wailed the 
little first-year-primer Blue Belle. ‘Oh, I don’t 
want a mother-in-law—I want my school! I 
want my Shepherdess! ” 

“ Fiddle-dee-dee! ” clucked her mother sternly, 
for of course it made no least difference what 
such a mere child wanted; and that is how Goody 
Two Shoes got a mother-in-law far quicker than 
she liked, in spite of her unbound lilies. But 


[ 267 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Chinese weddings move slowly, and it took time 
to pack her boxes. If you had been there you 
would have understood why daughters were 
called “lose-money-persons,”’ for there were 
boxes and boxes and boxes full of embroidered 
jackets, embroidered trousers, embroidered shoes, 
as well as presents which had to be sent to the 
groom and presents of money to the go-between 
who had arranged the match. And in this par- 
ticular case, the father of Goody Two Shoes was 
rather nervous, fearing that at any moment the 
fact of her big feet might cause trouble; not that 
the wedding could be stopped, for engagements 
in China are as binding as marriages, but high 
words might be said and he might “ lose face ”— 
nothing could be more awful than to feel publicly 
ashamed. However, the Luck Doctor had chosen 
the only possible lucky day: a date on which no- 
body in the bride’s family and nobody in the 
groom’s family had ever died. 

Goody Two Shoes was dressed in her bright 
red bridal coat and trousers, satin, embroidered 
with gold dragons. There was a story about the 
making of the coat, for the seamstress broke a 
_needle while sewing a seam, which was such bad 
luck that the family had had to buy more goods 


[ 268 ] 






GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 





and cut out a new coat. The whole wedding 
seemed unlucky—a big-foot bride, broken- 
hearted; needles splitting in two, spoiling an 
expensive coat. 

Finally the hour came to leave. A long red 
veil was hung all over the face of the little bride, 
and her father led her out to a great red sedan- 
chair—the red chair in which only brides may 
ride; the minute she stepped out in the street the 
door was banged shut behind her to keep the 
family luck from following her! And all this 
time they were pinching Goody Two Shoes so 
that she would cry and act unwilling to leave 
home as every Chinese bride should act; but Iam 
sure you know already that no pinching was 
necessary ; Goody Two Shoes was able to do her 
own weeping and sobbing. 

Bing-bang-bing! snapped the family firecrack- 
ers in front of her and behind her as her gaudy 
chair was carried through the streets. Behind 
her in a long procession came coolies bearing the 
great red wedding-boxes full of the jackets and 
trousers and shoes, other coolies were burdened 
to their very chins with piles of quilts, furniture, 
clocks. It really made a fine showing. 

“My! My!” chuckled the people in the street, 


[ 269 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





pressing closer to see whatever there was to see. 
“ Her family have done well by her! But it’s a 
bad business raising girls for other people. What 
good will her family ever have of her again, now 
that she’s going to belong to her mother-in-law? ” 

Red paper was pasted on the gate-posts of the 
bridegroom’s home, and a special wedding fire- 
basket was blazing in front of the door-sill. The 
bridegroom tapped on the big red chair with his 
fan; Goody Two Shoes knew that the knock 
meant “ We are there!” The curtains of the 
chair were parted, and she felt herself being lifted 
out. She was carried slowly over that little blaz- 
ing fire, for evil spirits simply cannot endure any 
heat; and you may be sure that the bridegroom’s 
family did not want any unknown demons to 
come in with the bride. Since it would be the 
worst of luck for a bride to stumble over the 
door-sill, Goody Two Shoes was carried right 
into the house where she and the groom then 
knelt down side by side and bowed their heads to 
the ground so many times that I should think 
they might have been dizzy—they bowed to the 
bridegroom’s parents, they bowed to the bride- 
eroom’s ancestral tablets, they bowed to the 
bridegroom’s household gods, they bowed to the 


[ 270 ] 





GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 


bridegroom’s go-betweens who had arranged the 
match, and of course they bowed to the guests. 

And then! then! then! as they rose to their feet 
the bridegroom lifted the red veil from the face 
of his little bride and took the first look he had 
ever had at Goody Two Shoes. By this time she 
was much too frightened to cry, and she looked 
exactly as she ought to look—her eyes primly 
gazing at the floor, her hands meekly folded in 
front of her, the nice yellow oval of her face bent 
modestly downward. 

The bridegroom was relieved: ‘“ This scholar 
will make a very good person to dwell in the inner 
apartments,” he said to himself. But what he 
thought really did not matter very much; it was 
his mother who counted. 

“Turn around!” she ordered. 

Goody Two Shoes made herself into a very 
shaky merry-go-round. 

“Not such a stupid face! ” croaked somebody’s 
harsh old voice. “ And that’s a fine red satin 
suit, the very best quality, handsomely em- 
broidered.” 

“True! True! A fine red suit, handsomely 
embroidered,” echoed the less important relatives. 

“ But look at her feet! Look at her feet! Can 


[271] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





I believe my eyes? ” thundered the mother-in-law 
in disappointment and rage. 

“Ves, look at her feet! Look at her feet! 
Can we believe our eyes? ” echoed the relatives. 
They stared and stared and stared at Goody Two 
Shoes, who seemed to have turned to ice. 

“Sadly we have been cheated! Wickedly, 
wickedly deceived! Look at her feet!”’ groaned 
the old lady. 

“ Look at her feet!” echoed the obliging rela- 
tives. 

“ Awful!” 

“Dreadtil! 7 

“ A regular working-woman’s feet!” 

“ Impossible! ” 

6é Huge! 93 

Poor Goody Two Shoes was so embarrassed 
that she felt like the most enormous giant ever 
made: her head seemed to bump the ceiling, her 
feet seemed to stretch from wall to wall, she won- 
dered if anybody else had ever been so wide, so 
high. Then suddenly she began shrinking and 
dwindling until there was absolutely nothing left 
of her. “ I’monly as big asa salted almond,” she 
thought. ‘‘ How nice! They can’t see me now. 
I'll fall through a crack and disappear.” 


[ 272 ] 


GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 


All of which proves how nervous she was: for 
actually she was the same Goody Two Shoes as 
ever! Only, when the scathing remarks were 
hottest, the bridegroom himself spoke up—he 
said unbelievable things; he said that an edict had 
been passed forbidding Chinese women to bind 
their feet; he said that in the big seaport cities 
this was being obeyed; only little conservative in- 
land cities like theirs were behind the times; 
everywhere else women of education had big feet. 
He himself had seen ten thousand of them in 
Shanghai. 

Of course this threw cold water on the ladies. 
They decided to keep quiet in his presence; and 
the wedding went forward as Chinese weddings 
generally do, with a great deal of feasting for 
several days. But a curious thing was happen- 
ing to Goody Two Shoes: when she was loneliest 
she used to pretend that she was in school, and 
one day she suddenly remembered the story of 
the Peking bell. ‘“ The new Shepherdess said I 
was another Ko Ai, that maybe I would have to 
sacrifice myself to help others. Well, here I am! 
Thrown into the midst of a lot of disagreeable 
women! Greatly, greatly must I try to be 
Ko Ai.” 


[273 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





From that day, instead of being glum and meek 
and lonely, she began to pretend that she was 
a combination Cynthia, Amazing Grace, Plain 
Gray Lady. She was too comical for words. 
She was jolly like Cynthia, sensible like Amazing 
Grace, wise like the Plain Gray Lady. She flung 
herself into the life of that home like the heroine 
she wanted to be, she was pleasant to the sisters- 
in-law and merry with the nieces and nephews. 
She told about the Mah Jong cry-baby and even 
tried to make the babies under the rooftree 
“clean-to-death ” with baths. 

“She is trying to steal our hearts,” smiled the 
sisters-in-law who were young. 

‘““She won’t succeed!” sneered the sisters-in- 
laws who were older. ‘‘ There is no good in that 
girl. She will not, will not, zwill not bow before 
the kitchen god or the idols on the godshelf! She 
ought to be spanked.” 

But nobody spanked her. For the most part 
she was too unimportant to notice, for around the 
courtyard were so many houses rambling one into 
the other that they formed a regular village, 
everybody a daughter-in-law or a grandchild of 
the stern old lady who had no use at all for Goody 
Two Shoes when so many other problems kept 


[ 274] 





GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 


coming up. One day, however, there was the 
sound of chair-bearers along the narrow street; 
Cynthia was always amused at the bearers as 
they trotted patiently hour after hour carrying 
her sedan-chair and calling all sorts of remarks 
to the people in the road: “Clear the way!” 
“Scrape your shins!” “Open your head!” 
“ Chair coming! Chair! Chair!” At last they 
set down her chair before a certain gate, and 
when she and the Plain Gray Lady walked in 
Goody Two Shoes had the surprise of her life— 
the Shepherdesses had come to call! Oh, such 
introductions, such bowings! 

Sisters-in-laws came hurrying from all the 
houses around the courtyard. Nieces and 
nephews scampered in. Everybody politely 
pulled the sleeves of the guests: “Sit here! Sit 
up higher! ” 

But Cynthia hung back, modestly. The Plain 
Gray Lady hung back modestly. 

“Good enough manners!” mumbled the old 
mother-in-law begrudgingly. 

It took ten full minutes before they could sit 
down and have tea. But the Plain Gray Lady 
knew exactly how to win the approval of all 
ladies, even hostile old ladies!’ She asked a hun- 


[ 275 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


dred questions: How old are you? (The politest 
question possible.) How many sons have you? 
How many grandsons? What a handsome 
room! What fine daughters-in-law! What 
bright grandchildren! Could all these little girls 
read? No? (By which you will see how 
gradually she was bringing the conversation 
around to Goody Two Shoes. ) 

“No,” said the mother-in-law, “ none of us can 
read.” 

“Oh, what a pity!) None of you?” 

“Well, yes, one of us. This little bride I have 
just gotten for my youngest son can read a little, 
and she is trying to teach my granddaughters. 
But it is nothing. Nothing. A thing not worth 
noticing.” 

“Excuse me for impolitely differing,” begged 
the Plain Gray Lady, “ but surely it is something 
to be noticed. Might I put you to the great trou- 
ble of hearing them read? ” 

“No trouble! No trouble!” the mother-in- 
law was forced to say politely. And presently 
there was a lovely picture to be seen: Goody Two 
Shoes and five wee nieces each with a sheet of 
paper reading aloud in a sing-song fashion but 
at the tops of voices: “ Let your light so shine 


[ 276 | 


eg 
GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 
a 


before men that they may see your good works 
and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” 

“ Wonderful!” cried the Plain Gray Lady, 
clapping her hands. 

“ Wonderful! ” echoed the diplomatic Cynthia, 
clapping her hands even louder. 

The mother-in-law tossed her head a little, 
partly with pride, partly with pleasure: “Oh, 
that’s nothing! ” she boasted. ‘“ They read longer 
than that quite often. But it’s not a thing to be 
noticed—just little girls.” 

Cynthia had an inspiration. “ Could I be per- 
mitted to take a photograph of them, Venerable 
One? In my over-the-ocean home I have little 
sisters who would love to see your glorious little 
grandchildren reading. See, I have my camera 
with me! ” 

But the old lady had no idea about this photo- 
graph business. How was it done anyhow? 
Flow could you send to America such a parcel of 
flesh-and-blood children? Was it magic? That 
thing looked like a box. Was it a box? Cer- 
tainly she would never consent to have even 
granddaughters wedge their heads into a box as 
small as that. 

Cynthia tried not to laugh. “They shall not 


E2A4-1 


ae 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


 ———ee eee 


be wedged!” she promised. “They need only 
stand and read. It will be quite safe. My little 
box is like a house with a window. Behind the 
window is a special piece of paper which knows 
how to take pictures of the things in front of the 
window.” 

The old lady was interested: “ Then hee con- 
descend to take a picture of me. These little 
nuisances are hardly worth taking.” 

The faces of the little nuisances fell about a 

yard and a half. Such a crushing disappoint- 
ment! But the Plain Gray Lady immediately 
suggested a group picture with everybody in it, 
old and young. “Then we can write home to 
our friends in America that this is the clan of 
the house of Tsao, where five bright little 
granddaughters have learned to read.” 
But the old lady objected: “ That is entirely 
too much flattery for five such little trifles. I 
also must be seen reading. Give me some- 
thing to read, and then let your box look at us.” 

Cynthia smiled at such vanity. But a Bible 
was given the old lady and tracts to all the others. 
They stood there like stiff statues, with the most 
painfully fixed expressions on their faces, the 
most scholarly scowls on their solemn foreheads. 


[ 278 ] 





GOODY TWO SHOES GOT A MOTHER-IN-LAW 





_ And the old lady scowled hardest of all. She 
scowled too wisely! For Goody Two Shoes, 
looking over her shoulder, cried: “Oh, excuse 
me! Excuse me! But the Venerable One is 
holding her Book upside-down. Excuse me, but 
print belongs this side up. Allow me to fix it! 
Excuse me!” And she turned the Bible the 
proper way round. 

But the old lady was simply furious. She felt 
that she had lost face. ‘“ Simpleton!” she 
snapped, and slapped the ears of Goody Two 
Shoes so hard that tears came dripping down her 
cheeks like tiny Niagara Falls. 

Goody Two Shoes wiped away Niagara hastily. 
From somewhere in her new heart she fetched 
up an April-showery smile: ‘“ Excuse me!” she 
bowed. 

The old lady grew ashamed of herself: “‘ This 
silly wifeling has no proper spirit!” she ex- 
plained rather lamely. “ We are ready. Let 
your box look at us.” 

The box “looked.” There was a little click; 
all was over! Then Cynthia said: “ Now you 
can smile all you want to! Smile, please, as if 
you saw te 

“A little birdie!” laughed the Plain Gray 


[ 279 ] 





a 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Ea, 


Lady, wiggling her fingers in midair like a 
regular professional photographer. 

The clan of the house of Tsao relaxed from 
scholars into gigglers. ‘But where is the 
birdie?” they giggled. Cynthia let her box 
“look” at those giggles; there was another click. 

“ Thank you,” she said. 

And when she mailed the snapshots to Amer- 
ica this is what she wrote: “ We sent a little 
candle from our school one day, such a stupid 
little candle that we feared it might be blown out. 
But here it is, letting its light so shine that some 
day (if we all watch and help and pray) the clan 
of the house of Tsao is going to glorify our 
Father who is in heaven. The candle’s name is 
Goody Two Shoes.” 


[ 280 ] 


Sube 





No wonder the Blue Belles wanted to scamper away from 
Cynthia’s giant fly! For on the soles of their feet flies have 
pads of very fine hairs: little hooked>hairs which are the most 
perfect collectors of all kinds of microscopic dirt; it almost looks 
as though Glorious Fighter and Heavenly Repose had no more 
to be afraid of a mere fly than of the most horrific idol in town. 
You will, of course, find it great fun to make this poster your- 
self. If the wings were made of stiff black tarlatan how effective 
they would be. 


mM rae coT 
LAT AL Th LY 7 Tb 


“ Mix with mandarins and grow poor.” 


“Men’s hearts are like iron and the rule of the mandarins 
like a furnace.” 


“ An honest magistrate has lean clerks; a powerful god has fat 
priests.” 


“Tet a dog bite a scholar and no one cares, but if a scorpion 
sting a mandarin sympathizers come in such crowds as to break 
down the doors.” 


XX 


PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE 
MANDARIN 


Ir was a fly that began this story. A fly, and 
a Bible verse. The fly arrived in time to have 
breakfast with Cynthia. He was a perfect nui- 
sance. He sat on her nose and practised finger 
exercises until she swept him away 1n disgust. 
Then he sat on her oatmeal and made faces at 
her by rubbing his legs over his nose in a most 
ill-bred fashion. She swept him away in still 
greater disgust. He did not mind! He started 
on a brisk walking tour up and down her arm, 
exactly as Cynthia herself had one time paced 
the steamer deck—so many rounds making a 
mile. She shooed him away, and the little rascal 
balanced on the rim of her milk-glass, teetering 
back and forth in utmost Chinese glee. “I’m 
overwhelmed! I’m low in my mind over that 
fly!’ Cynthia cried. 

“What? One fly?” asked the Plain Gray 
Lady. 

“Oh, mercy no! But I’m multiplying him by 


[ 283 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


all the flies in town. I’m seeing everybody’s 
breakfast swarming with flies. I’m seeing the 
markets with fruit and meat and fish all black and 
buzzing with flies. I’m seeing babies with flies 
marching in vast armies up and down their legs 
and arms, climbing the mountains of their little 
noses, crawling into the crater of their little 
mouths. And I’m suddenly sick to death of flies. 
Just sick to death of them. I think it’s time we 
got rid of flies in this city!” 

That was at breakfast. . 

At prayers, immediately following, Amazing 
Grace read the Nineteenth Psalm in her calm 
lovely voice, the Blue Belles sitting with their 
quiet hands resting on their little blue-cotton 
trousers—looking as they always looked at 
prayer-time: very sweet and quite too good to be 
true! But this morning Cynthia’s fly came buzz- 
ing through the doorway and went from Blue 
Belle to Blue Belle, sitting on noses, sliding down 
cheeks, tickling foreheads, buzzing here, buzzing 
there. 

Out of all that psalm, Amazing Grace selected 
for her special text the verse: “ Keep back thy 
servant also from presumptuous sins, let them 
not have dominion over me.” 


[ 284 ] 





PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 


“ Now what,” asked Amazing Grace, “ what is 
a presumptuous sin?” 

The Blue Belles wrinkled their dear yellow 
brows into regular bow-knots as they thought 
and thought. Cinnamon Flower said maybe it 
meant taking something that didn’t belong to you! 
Elegant Virtue said maybe it meant acting as 
if you knew a lesson when the teacher knew you 
didn’t! George said it was trying to do some- 
thing too hard for a person of your particular 
age and ability; (undoubtedly she was remember- 
ing her dragon!) but this answer was so good 
that Cynthia fell to thinking about herself: “ [’m 
a Presumptuous Cyn every day of my life,” she 
sighed, and just then the fly tickled her nose. 

This was enough to set her thinking: Would it 
be too presumptuous to try to rid this city of 
flies? But when and where and how? When? 
“Well, today!” vowed Cynthia. Where? 
“ Why, in school of course!” How? Ah, that 
was the puzzler. How indeed? But at this mo- 
ment there came the sound of firecrackers, the 
thumping of drums, and the tramp of feet on the 
cobblestone street. Grandmother Gate-Woman 
came padding in on her straw sandals to say: 
“ That was the great Mandarin passing by. He 


[ 285 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





has been on a visit and is just returning home 
with all his chair-bearers and runners. But 
Father God doesn’t want me to be afraid of a 
Mandarin, I guess; so I just opened the gate and 
handed him a tract. Was that all right? It 
wasn’t too pushing, was it? Or too——” she 
hesitated for the proper word. 

“ Presumptuous! ” Cynthia supplied. “ Well, 
no; I think, too, that if it wasn’t presumptuous 
for you, certainly it can’t be presumptuous for 
me, either. I'll begin with the Mandarin my- 
self.” 

But down in her heart Cynthia had a real awe 
of this pompous, important gentleman, in his long 
rich satin coat and his black cap with the peacock 
feather— 


“Stuck a feather in his cap 
And called it mandarin—in,” 


she quoted to herself occasionally. But today she 
said: “ He’s just one man; he’s just one impor- 
tant but ignorant man; he doesn’t know there is 
any world worth copying outside the walls of his 
city. He’s nothing but my little Buffalo Bill on 
a bigger, more awe-inspiring scale. I must try to 
win him over! ” 


[ 286 ] 


PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 


Aloud, to the Plain Gray Lady, she announced: 
“You behold in me, Madam, the one and only 
Board of Health in town. Moreover, I’m about 
to begin my hygienic, prophylactic, sanitary ca- 
reer this very moment! ” 

“Congratulations! Might one inquire how 
you will begin your operations? ” 

“By a poster! Just like they do in our little 
old U. S. A.—wait till you see it!” 

She had not long to wait for Cynthia flew to 
her room and hastily painted a truly enormous 
fly in the very center of a piece of cardboard: he 
was so very big and black that the little blue- 
trousered child in one corner of the poster could 
hardly be blamed for shivering in its boots as it 
looked up in terror. In the opposite corner soon 
appeared the slogan in Chinese: 


SWAT THE FLY 
AND 


SAVE THE CHILD 


When the school-bell rang she flew to her class- 
room and lectured learnedly on flies: their habits, 
the diseases they brought, the menace they were 
to babies and children and grown-ups. The Blue 


[ 287 ] 


£5. 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Belles sat with their mouths wide open, simply 
fascinated. Cynthia was afraid the lecture might 
have gone in one ear and out the other, so she ar- 
ranged with Mr. Pepper for compositions on the 
subject to be brought in the next day. Here are 
the shortest and the longest, also the poorest and 
the best: (the second one by George!) 


FLIES 


I wish to write about flies. There is one kind 
called a spider, he sits up-stairs in a room and 
makes webs. There are also blue-bottled flies in 
barns. Flies eat things. Flies two wings can 
fly fast. When we try to catch them we can't. 
Some places have more flies, some less. We have 
more. 


THE FLy 


Does the fly seem little? He is big when you 
make an arithmetic add of 1 fly + 2 flies --num- 
bers 3, 4, 5, 2,000, 10,000, and so on forever as 
long as you can. Do his legs look silly? They 
are fuzzy; on the fuzz he catches a special dirty 
sickness from everything he touches and that 
makes his legs a horrid thing to have touch any 
one. 


[ 288 ] 





PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 





Follow one fly one day. It is morning, he gets 
out of bed. He sits on the dog’s tail. That is not 
very nice, but nicer than when he sits on dog’s 
nose. The nose is wet. The fly buzzes the house, 
he crawls over the pig. The pig is covered with 
street mud. The fly can hardly pull his legs 
loose. That is also not nice. The fly crawls over 
the beggar’s face. The beggar is a leper. This 
is less nice than anything so far. Then the fly 
goes to see baby boy. Baby boy is preciousness to 
nice lady mother, but the fly does not care. He 
tickles baby boy’s mouth with dirty legs. Off 
those dirty legs come all the sicknesses gathered 
from leper, mud, pig, dog, street. Baby boy 
though precious falls sick; very too much sick. 
Baby boy dies. Lady mother drops big tears out 
of her eyes. Lady grandmother drops other 
tears. Little fly boasts: “See what I do in 
Chinese town! I walk into any rice-bowl I 
please. I make everybody I please very too much 
sick.” Well, it is too bad. The Shepherdess 
could make a stop maybe. 


When Mr. Pepper read the papers he nearly 
fainted. “Greatly excuse me,” he said to Cyn- 
thia, bowing, “I must apologize. The composi- 


[ 289 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





tions are not good to read fora lady. They are 
very unkindly. I am ashamed. My miserable 
pupils should be spanked.” 

“Tet’s spank the flies instead,” laughed Cyn- 
thia. “I’m starting a crusade today, so please 
give me all the compositions.” 

The Plain Gray Lady read them delight- 
edly: “ Wonderful! Wonderful!” she cried. 
“George has found her second dragon to slay!” 

Cynthia nodded, and that very afternoon she 
went to the yamen to pay a visit to the Mandarin, 
armed with the poster and those most unladylike 
compositions, Amazing Grace chaperoning her. 
The Mandarin was never so surprised in his life. 
Imagine calling about—flies! He quoted a well- 
known Chinese proverb at Cynthia: “‘ When 
heaven rears aman he grows very fat; when men 
rear a man he is but skin and bones.” Therefore 
what canI do? What canIdo? If heaven wills 
it, baby boys die.” 

But Cynthia was very proud to be able to 
quote another Chinese proverb in her turn: 
“* Men’s hearts are like iron, and the rule of the 
mandarins like a furnace.’ For your honor has 
but to endorse our plan, and how the hearts of 
the people will soften! And how many less 


[ 290 ] 





PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 





funerals there will be in town—you could even 
boast yourself of a great population where men 
never die, where babies always grow to old age— 
just imagine it!” 

The Mandarin clasped his hands over his 
stomach. He closed his eyes. It looked as if he 
were certainly picturing the felicities of such a 
town. Cynthia left him nodding his head 
solemnly as if in approval; but she was not at all 
sure about him, so she left the poster behind her. 
On the way out toward the street she was im- 
pressed anew by the loveliness of his quaint old 
palace, for the gateways through his walls were 
cut in shapes—some were circles, “ Moon Gate ”’; 
some were cut like vases, “ Jar Gate”; his win- 
dows had dragon patterns over them; his great 
flagged courtyards were probably centuries old; 
wisteria climbed his walls, and lovely roses. 
“This is sheer fairyland,” she thought. And 
then with a smile, added, “ But there’s a fly in 
the ointment.” She hurried home and persuaded 
Mr. Pepper to paint on a long red paper a true 
story of what had been done in another Chinese 
town. 

The following afternoon Cynthia rolled the 
three yards of story into a scroll and paid a 


[291 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


second call on the Mandarin, with Amazing 
Grace. She quoted a Chinese proverb at him: 
“Past events are as clear as a mirror; future 
events are as dark as lacquer.” 

“True!” he said, clapping his hands over his 
stomach and wagging the feather in his cap. 
Cynthia unrolled the scroll and Amazing Grace 
read the true story of the town of Tengchowfu 
where once upon a time every plan known to 
heathendom had been tried to rid the town of 
cholera, yet the sick died daily by the hundreds. 
The people even tried “ going over into a new 
year” to deceive the gods and evil spirits into a 
belief that the unlucky year was now past and a 
new year had come for other good spirits to 
rule. People put on their best clothes, they beat 
drums, they fired firecrackers, they paid calls and 
feasted exactly as if it were really New Year’s. 
But the celebration only spread the cholera 
quicker; from all over town people carried their 
sick and laid them before the shrine of the god 
of bewitchment, hoping he might cast off the 
spell. But this only spread the cholera quicker. 
Mourners were in the street day and night fol- 
lowing funeral processions. Then into that town 
came two Christian doctors who knew that flies 


[ 292 ] 





PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 


were the chief agents in spreading the disease. 
Two hospitals were started; flies were swatted 
diligently; and after several months of wonder- 
ful service that one town adopted for all time the 
Christian’s way of health and safety. 

The Mandarin nodded his head importantly. 
“ Past events are as clear as a mirror,” he quoted 
aloud, as Cynthia arose to depart, leaving the 
three-yard story behind her. 

But the third day she returned with six of her 
Blue Belles, scrubbed as clean as could be—Fra- 
grant Gentility dressed in her Sunday-go-to- 
meeting purple pantaloons, of course. Each 
Blue Belle carried a bright yellow placard. They 
spoke their “ pieces” bravely, and tried not to 
be worried by the majesty of the great man 
before them. 

“Tf you please, Your Honor,” began George, 
the dragon-killer, “ we would like to start a fly- 
killing contest in town. We six are going to see 
who of us can get the most people to sign our 
placards promising to ‘ swat the fly and save the 
child.” We would be overcome with grateful 
emotion if you would graciously condescend to 
sign one of our placards yourself.” 

At this point it was the Mandarin himself who 


[ 293 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


was overcome with emotion: “ I never killed a fly 
in my life!” he said pompously. 

“ Flies,’ began George, “have very naughty 
legs. In the fuzz they carry a special sickness 
from everything they touch. The child of the 
Magnificent Mandarin and the child of the thin 
coolie are all alike to flies i 

“Yes! Yes!” interrupted the Mandarin, 
hastily. “I have read a paper stating all those 
facts. Indeed, I have thought of nothing but flies 
for three days.” | 

“So have we!” beamed the Blue Belles, and 
Fragrant Gentility stepped forward modestly: 
“Perhaps you would sign here? ” 

The Mandarin clapped his hands six times. In 
came six secretaries. Such wonderful men! The 
Blue Belles gasped with admiration. “ Sign your 
names on those placards,” the Mandarin ordered. 
The secretaries signed. “And now,” continued 
the Mandarin, waving his hand in dismissal, “ I 
hope this may be the end of the whole matter.” 

“T hope so, too,” Cynthia agreed pleasantly. 
“You have been more than gracious! I am lost 
in the contemplation of your distinguished cour- 
tesy. Certainly the like of this has never hap- 
pened to me in my own country.” 


[ 294 ] 





PRESUMPTUOUS CYN AND THE MANDARIN 


The Mandarin was obviously much pleased. 
“Of course,” as Cynthia explained later to the 
Plain) Gray Wady, ~ 1 never have been in’ the 
habit of visiting presidents or governors or even 
mayors, at home. But I think he feels ’m a 
person of some consequence.” 

“And aren’t you?” smiled the Plain Gray 
Lady. 

The Fly Campaign was a great success. The 
Blue Belles learned by heart George’s composi- 
tion, and “‘orated” it with great eloquence to 
many an astonished family. But Cynthia knew 
that the idea had really taken when a certain 
butcher, on the Street of the Seventy Honest 
Merchants, covered his meat with mosquito- 
netting and placed outside his shop a brilliant 
green placard announcing boastfully, “ For sale 
—meat on which a fly has never stepped! ”’ 


[ 295 ] 








The simplest way to make a pagoda is to cut from red card- 
board two patterns of the pagoda front shown here; make them 
very high so that they can be glued to the front and back sides 
of a long narrow box in which girdles or stays have been bought. 
Blacken the portion of the pagoda which is dark in this cut. 
It is also possible to make extra shelving red roofs to slip through 
slits at the narrowest part of each of the seven roofs; these can 
then project at picturesque angles. To secure an evenly balanced 
pattern fold a piece of newspaper, and beginning at the fold draw 
one-half the pagoda. Cut this out, unfold, and outline it on the 
red cardboard. 

The old red-roofed pagoda which was a landmark just outside 
the walls of Cynthia’s city was built centuries ago by a widow as 
a memorial to her husband. 


mh i priate cooT 
AWWA MAO DD 


“To save one man’s life is better than to build a seven-storied 
pagoda.” 


“The loftiest towers rise from the ground.” 


“Thatch your roof before rainy weather, dig your well before 
you become parched with thirst.” 


XXI 
THE CHAIR ON) THE ROOF 


It was going to be a holiday. Or at least that 
was what the Plain Gray Lady said it would be. 
But as Cynthia sighed that night, “‘ If this is your 
idea of a holiday, little saint, then what, oh what, 
is your idea of a work-day?” The Plain Gray 
Lady referred her to the dictionary, and tired 
though she was, Cynthia opened it at the word 
holiday and read, “‘ A holy-day.” 

“Of course! That’s exactly what it has been, 
a holy day. I shall never forget it as long as I 
live.” Which was mostly due to old Deacon Ding 
and the chair on his roof. 

Deacon Ding was so very old that his long 
white beard hung down on his chest like those 
which you see on the patriarchs. His kind old 
face was seamed and wrinkled until it looked like 
the relief-map of some foreign country. If you 
asked me what that country was, I should not 
know what to say, but Deacon Ding would prob- 
ably have chuckled, “ America.”’ He was very 
fond of America, and one day the Plain Gray 


[ 299 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





Lady had a letter from him, in English. It was 
a very beautiful letter: 


“Tam very gladly that you come back from 
America on top. I thanking God that I can see 
you once in this world bequickly. When you are 
gone that makes us very sorrow. Now beg you 
permitting me you come here to give me a good 
Christian nourishment for my soul, for I know- 
ing God does not let me burden this heavy laden 
longer. The wemen of my village that you love 
wish for their shepherdess and cry in the night 
missing you.” 


The Plain Gray Lady said at once: “ Suppose 
we take a holiday tomorrow and ride out to see 
him. It’s only six miles off.” 

A basket of lunch was prepared, and early the 
next morning Cynthia climbed into one sedan- 
chair, the Plain Gray Lady into another. The 
chair-bearers started off at a jog through the 
narrow streets calling as usual: “Clear the 
way!” “Scrape your shins!” ‘Open your 
heads!” “ Chair coming!” The Street of the 
Seventy Honest Merchants was beginning to 
wake up as the merchants took down their shop 


[ 300 | 


THE CHAIR ON THE ROOF 


fronts, long gaudy signs flapped before each shop 
—a giant boot before the shoe-store, a gilded fan 
before a fan emporium. The coolies bore the 
chair through the little narrow streets so full of 
donkeys heaped high with baskets of vegetables, 
of wheelbarrows heaped high with bundles and 
lily-foot women, of pedlers heaped high with 
brooms, pots, and pans, of sweetmeat-sellers. 
Once outside the city gates, there was Buffalo 
Bill to be seen on top of Two Horns, and old Aunt 
Ling driving her flock of geese down the road- 
way, while peasants were working knee-deep in 
the rice-fields, and the slender old red-roofed 
pagoda seemed to watch them with age-old indif- 
ference: “ Peasants come and peasants go, but I 
last on forever.” 

At the first village the news spread like wild- 
fire: “The Teacher! The Teacher! The 
Teacher has come to town!” A crowd gathered, 
and the Plain Gray Lady gave a Bible talk and 
handed tracts to every one. Old women crowded 
nearer to ask questions. Young women elbowed 
up to tell her secrets. Children, too, had some- 
thing special to be whispered in the Plain Gray 
Lady’s ears. 

“ At this rate, we shall never get to Deacon 


[ 301 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Ding’s,” smiled Cynthia, for the next village had 
a school with an ex-Blue Belle teacher, a girl who 
beamed with delight to show off her little classes 
to the Real Teacher. Was she doing everything 
properly? Was it wrong to spank Fragile Lily 
for making faces so abominably at Old Pink 
Jade? It was? Oh dear! Oh dear! She had 
questions enough to last a week, and the Plain 
Gray Lady promised to stop on the way back. 
For she knew she must hurry to reach Deacon 
Ding’s, and she knew she would be stopping all 
along the way. 

“ Look at that chair on the roof!” cried Cyn- 
thia. “ What is it there for?” 

“Ask Deacon Ding,” said the Plain Gray 
Lady. The old man was delighted to see her. 
He reminded Cynthia of Abraham when the 
angels of the Lord came down to call—he was so 
humble and so gracious. His grandchildren were 
tremendously proud of him: “Grandpa,” they 
said, “ the new Shepherdess has asked about the 
chair. Tell her the whole story, right from the 
very beginning.” 

“ Well,” said Deacon Ding, “ there was once a 
little boy, and he was lame. He did not matter 
to any one; was he not the ninth son, and was he 


[ 302 ] 





THE CHAIR ON THE ROOF 





not lame? Since the gods were evidently bored 
and indifferent to him, the family was also. He 
had kicks all day long, and slaps.” 

“That little boy was Grandpa,” whispered 
Tender Perfume softly, afraid that Cynthia 
might not catch the point of the story. 

“One day a foreign devil came to live in town. 
Immediately the wells went dry, the chimneys 
smoked, the whole luck changed. Men told each 
other that the white man had magic power to 
make himself invisible and slip in or out of closed 
doors, he could poison rice in the rice-bowls one 
mile off, he could stupefy children—do you won- 
der that I, a little lame boy, was stiff with fright 
whenever I saw himcoming? And yet it was this 
foreign devil who saw me kicked out on the street 
one day; he picked me out of the muddy gutter, 
he carried me home with him. I expected any 
minute to be stupefied and cooked up into soup 
or medicine.” 

The grandchildren giggled at Cynthia: “ Just 
fancy!” 

“ But he was very gentle to me,”’ Deacon Ding 
nodded, “ he whittled me a pair of funny sticks 
called crutches to help me walk, but all this time 
he could not talk to me because he knew no 


[ 303 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Chinese. He would hold up a cup, and I would 
say ‘cup’ in Chinese; he would write it down. 
He touched chairs, tables, beds, chickens, books, 
rice, until he had a long list of my brains on 
paper. It made me nervous: ‘If he keeps on 
spreading my brains on paper then I shall be 
stupefied!’ I said. But he rubbed my poor lame 
back every night so that I could rest on it with- 
out pain, and while I taught him Chinese he 
taught me—love. But one day the people mobbed 
him, flogged him, and drove him out of town. I 
could tell I had been bewitched because my heart 
was twisted for the love of him. But years went 
by, and he never came. I thought he had died 
from our flogging. But I kept on reading his 
little black Book. I read it to my parents, for 
when I could walk they decided to take me back 
home. My family liked the Book. We loaned it 
to our neighbors. Our neighbors liked the Book. 
Ten years went by. When the Boxers came to 
town I baked the Bible in a loaf of bread in the 
oven to hide it, and my parents were killed for 
daring to have liked those words and because they 
were unwilling to step on the Saviour’s cross. I 
would have been killed, too, except that I was 
lame again, now that I had outgrown the 


[ 304 } 


SUE NEREeneneeeneeeeness eee 
THE CHAIR ON THE ROOF 
= ee 


crutches. So the Boxers said, ‘ Just a stupid idiot 
man, not worth troubling about.’ But when 
they had gone I had no family left; I asked a go- 
between to find me an inside person, and I got 
married. I read her the book so that she could 
be a Christian, too. We were very poor. We 
nearly starved.” 

“ He had to eat soup made from corn-cobs and 
roots,” his grandchildren sighed sympathetically. 

“Yes,” nodded old Deacon Ding, stroking his 
beard. “Well, time went on. By and by the 
white man came back to town with his inside per- 
son and his grown daughter. She educated my 
daughters. He came to sit in my home. It was 
like heaven. He built a church, and I was his 
first deacon. I have been a deacon ever since. 
He kept on sitting in my house, opening up his 
Book and telling me the wonders of his save-the- 
world-doctrine until heaven came down and sat 
also under our rooftree, just as the Bible says, 
‘Thy kingdom come on earth, asin heaven.’ Ten 
years this happened. And then, from too many 
journeys over swollen rivers, from too many 
chillings afterward, from too many preachings 
he grew so tired that God the Father leaned out 
of the real heaven and said, ‘ You’d better come 


[ 305 ] 


aaa, 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





home and rest with me now.’ So he went home 
to rest. And his special chair was very empty.” 

“Tell what you said about it,’ urged his 
younger listeners eagerly. 

“T said to my family, ‘ Nobody is to sit on this 
chair unless they are willing to be what the 
Honorable Teacher was.’ So a long while went 
by, then one day I found my oldest son on that 
chair: ‘ Father, I am going to be a preacher,’ he 
said. So sure enough, he is preaching now in 
another province. Then by and by my second 
son sat on the chair: ‘ Father, I would like to be 
a teacher.’ Well, he is teaching in a Christian 
school. Next my daughter sat on it: ‘ Father, I 
would love to be a Christian doctor.’ This was a 
big surprise, but she became a doctor. And when 
the baby grew up he, too, sat on the chair: 
‘Father, I’m going to bea Christian singer.’ He 
has a fine voice for God to use. But after that 
there was nobody left under my rooftree to use 
the chair, for my children were scattered far and 
wide; so then I had it tied on the roof. A chair 
on a roof does a lot of good. It preaches 
sermons! ” 

The grandchildren smiled: “ It’s grandfather 
who preaches the sermons. You see, he can’t go 


[ 306 ] 


THE CHAIR ON THE ROOF 


out any more, he’s so crippled and lame. But 
people passing by the house are sure to see the 
chair, they come indoors to ask about it, and 
grandpa gets as much of an audience as he wants. 
But some day, when we get a little older, he says 
he’s going to take it down and bring it indoors 
so that we can sit on it; provided, of course, that 
we decided to be God’s workers. I think we will, 
don’t your” 

You can see for yourself why this all seemed 
like a holy day to Cynthia. Especially when she 
said that night to the Plain Gray Lady, “ There’s 
one thing I’ve wanted to ask you all day, who was 
that missionary whose chair is on the roof?” 

The Plain Gray Lady answered: “ He was my 
father! I thought maybe you had guessed. It 
was on that chair that I, too, pledged my life to 
China.” 

As Cynthia wrote home to her brother Bob: 
“ Where will you find a Hallowe’en story like 
this? Next Sunday tell your class about it and 
I think they will want to sing all the verses of 


For all Thy saints, who from their labors rest, 

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, 

Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest, 
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” 


[ 307 ] 





oe oe el: 


J 
I 
V7 


Mere e why (2 
ms ‘ te Race ah 
i 


This is what is going to happen on the ninth day of every 
ninth moon in the new school of the new China Shepherd. All 
the boys will observe Kites’ Day, and the kites will become quite 
hopelessly tangled; but that will be half the fun, of course! 

Undoubtedly these two are Glorious Fighter and Heavenly 
Repose sent by their Granny to a school where even more 
wonderful things can come out of the sky than pantaloons— 
things like education and wisdom and comfort and peace. 


murat cT 


e 


WMA TH OO AT 


“Those who chase kites, fall over straws.” 


“ A man cannot become perfect in a hundred years; he may 
become corrupt in less than a day.” 


“One family builds a wall and two families get the benefit 
of it.” 


XXII 
ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 


Tue last thing that our China Shepherdess ex- 
pected to meet on a Chinese street was a China 
Shepherd! Indeed, the first time she met him she 
had no least idea that he was a shepherd; and to 
tell the truth, he had no least idea of it himself. 

He says now that he was walking along that 
slippery cobblestone street thinking only of kero- 
sene-oil, when suddenly he found himself think- 
ing only of Cynthia. For there she was! He 
stood and stared at her. He had never in his life 
seen any one like her! Because he was so large, 
and because the street was so narrow, he com- 
pletely blocked all traffic; exactly as a certain pig 
had done once upon a time. And Cynthia, who 
had not known how in the world to get the pig 
out of the way, knew exactly how to deal with 
the man! Especially a man who wore a straw 
hat, a white starched collar, a brown necktie, and 
a Palm Beach suit. 

“ Excuse me,” she said in her best English, and 
with very delicate sarcasm, “ might I pass? a 


[311] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





It was all so perfectly ridiculous: two Ameri- 
cans in a little Chinese walled city begging each 
other’s pardon. Cynthia laughed first. Then the 
man laughed. 

“T had no idea that there were Americans in 
this out-of-the-way place,” he exclaimed, “are 
you traveling through somewhere?” He held 
his hat under his arm and stared down at Cyn- 
thia as if he had never seen a girl before. 

“Traveling? Oh, no; just living here, thank 
you!” she answered. This was so unbelievable 
to him that she really had to ask him to come and 
see for himself what the school was like. He 
said, “‘ Why can’t I come now?” 

The Plain Gray Lady soon found herself giv- 
ing a very unexpected tea-party, and she really 
had to smile up her sleeve at several things she 
could not help but see on the young gentleman’s 
face as he looked at Cynthia. “ Exactly as if she 
were too good to betrue! As if she might vanish 
into thin air any moment!” Whereupon she 
sighed deeply, wondering if Cynthia really might 
not vanish as far as the Heavenly Education-In- 
stilling School was concerned. . . 

Eating sandwiches hungrily, the caller began 
to tell about his business: ‘‘ Our oil-cans are all 


[312] 





ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 





over China from the ocean to Tibet, and from 
north to south as well. You really ought to see 
the clever way the Chinese use those oil-cans 
when the oil is gone—they roof their houses with 
them, they use them for coffins for babies, they 
hang a can at each end of a bamboo pole, and 
behold! water-buckets! It’s a great business— 
lighting China from end to end.” 

Cynthia smiled at his enthusiasm: “ Lighting 
China, indeed! Why, our company has been 
lighting China before yours ever dreamed there 
was such a place. A little oil in a lamp isn’t all 
the light in China, sir! How about taking a poor 
dull yellow Chinese face, tired and hopeless and 
heathen, and putting such a light behind it that 
mothers hardly recognize their own daughters.” 

“T don’t q-quite understand,” Tee the 
Oil Man apologetically. 

“Tet me show you!” Cynthia pith and led 
him to Grandmother Gate-Woman, pointing to 
the old woman with much pride: “ She’s putting 
more light in this town this moment than all your 
oil-cans could put in a year.” She showed him 
how the old woman was talking through the gate 
to the broom pedler. Then she showed him 
Silver Dew Drop asleep in her hammock on 


[ 313 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


Grandmother Gate-Woman’s porch. “ There’s 
a lamp who’s getting filled at our school; a lamp 
that helped make your silk necktie for you, too.” 
(He stroked his tie as if to feel what a Dew 
Drop had made of the job!) ‘ And there go Five 
Little Peppers scampering home—more lighted 
lamps, brimming over with the oil of gladness. 
No Foolish Virgins about them! Let me tell you 
about their front door 8 

The Oil Man listened eagerly. 

Then Cynthia took him to Amazing Grace. 
“T want to show this gentleman the part of our 
school where we make the greatest light in town. 
Where will I find it? ” Amazing Grace looked all 
around the courtyard thoughtfully, then she 
beckoned him to follow her. “ Childrens!” she 
beamed in her quaint careful English. ‘ There 
are nothings more lighter than little Chinese chil- 
drens; see, I make you a show of our new kinder- 
gartens. Bow, little childrens, bow! ” 

Fifteen plump little Blue Jackets bent in the 
middle and formed perfect loops of themselves 
to do honor to the glorious stranger. The 
glorious stranger wondered if they were not 
really dolls, their eyes were so bias, their cheeks 
so tan, their hair so straight in bangs. But when 


[ 314 ] 








ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 


they opened their mouths and sang with all their 
might he knew that they were human beings. 

Amazing Grace explained about them: “ Chi- 
nese mamma have got one big love over her baby 
—‘ Nicer baby could not be in all China!’ she 
boast. See? Well, give me that baby every day 
one little while. I put a song in him. I puta 
Bible in him. I put a clean wash on him. Then 
I send him home. My, what surprises that 
mamma are got over little clean-to-death baby. 
She must come church and find out all about this 
good Jesus. That make much light in this town. 
Very much light. See?” 

But I fear that the Oil Man could see nothing 
on earth but Cynthia just then. Presently he told 
her all this; and since time was so short and China 
so big and his oil so necessary, could she and 
would she marry him please, and spend the rest 
of her life lighting China, in his way? 

Cynthia became very pink. And then very 
white. But she said she was sorry—it was quite 
impossible. She felt that her way of lighting 
China was the only way for her! She—really— 
could—not— possibly—exchange—it— for—his. 
(The dashes are simply to show you what a 
dreadfully hard sentence this was to say to such 


[315 ] 


EES 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


aE 


a wonderful Oil Man. He was so very nice! He 
was so completely unexpected! He was every- 
thing a man should be! Except, of course, his 
business. ) 

“ But you don’t really mean this, do you?” he 
asked. 

“Tndeed, Ido! Indeed, Ido! You see, ’man 
enthusiast, too. Until I came here I had no idea 
what the Bible meant when it said that the people 
who sit in darkness have seen a great light. But 
I found this little city full of darkness—do you 
suppose kerosene-oil can ever give the kind of 
light to take fear out of people’s lives? Will it 
ever stop firecracker insurance? Or save front 
doors? Or take down kitchen gods and door 
gods? Will it slay dragons? Will it warm the 
heart that is five-jackets-cold? Or save little 
Mah Jong cry-babies? Or swat flies? Why, 
there isn’t kerosene enough in all the world to 
make Granny’s coffin seem less empty and dark! 
And tell me if there’s a chair on any roof in 
China in memory of a kerosene-oil agent?” 

The Oil Man shook his head. He had to go 
away; alone. “ Good-bye, little China Shep- 
herdess.”’ 

“ Good-bye,” she said. It was a very blue day 


[ 316] 





ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 





for both of them. Also a blue week, and a blue 
month. The little spring went out of Cynthia’s 
heels, the lovely violet light went out of her eyes. 
The Blue Belles began to worry dreadfully. 

George said fiercely: “ Not sick. Not cross. 
Not anything that pill-bottles could help, nor 
parties. We should pray Father God, I think.” 
And they all prayed; hard. 

One day, five months later, a little package 
came to Cynthia. She remembered the Christ- 
mas star which had also come in the mail and 
gone astray. She was glad to have this precious 
package safe, for inside it lay a little Dresden 
china shepherd, with a card: “ Coming on Thurs- 
day the twelfth to marry my China Shepherdess.” 
That was all it said. But it was quite enough. 
The violet came back to Cynthia’s eyes. The 
spring came back to her heels. Andon Thursday 
the twelfth the China Shepherd came. He was 
just the Oil Man, of course. 

“T lost my job,” he told the Plain Gray Lady 
before Cynthia came into the room. 

“To0 bad!” she sympathized. “And you 
were such a fine agent, I thought. However did 
you lose it?” 

“By giving it up to enlist as a China Shep- 


[ 317 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


herd,” he answered. For would you believe it? 
All the sights which Cynthia had shown him to 
prove how she too was lighting China had made 
an unforgetable impression. No oil-can seemed 
equal to the power hidden in those little human 
lamps in Cynthia’s care. He wrote all this to his 
Mission Board in America: “I don’t know 
whether you care to take me on or not, for I’m 
not a preacher nor a teacher, although I’ve had a 
college education and own a Phi Beta Kappa 
key. Also, ?m going to marry one of your own 
missionaries. And here are the points in my 
favor.” 

He gave a list of all the things that he could 
do, adding: “ You see, I’m fairly well equipped to 
tackle Chinese boys. I might also add that when 
I was a little chap myself I had to memorize whole 
chapters of the Bible, and to my surprise I find 
more evidences every day that it is a missionary 
book from cover to cover. Why did nobody ever 
tell me this before? Imagine a boy being allowed 
to grow up without knowing that every book in 
the New Testament was written by a foreign 
missionary! That the Acts of the Apostles are 
nothing more nor less than a missionary’s jour- 
nal! That every one of Jesus Christ’s twelve 


[ 318 ] 





ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 





apostles became a missionary except the one who 
became a traitor in order to earn thirty pieces of 
silver. Personally, I’m not aiming to earn any 
more pieces of silver by being a traitor to the 
biggest business on earth, the business of re- 
demption which Jesus Christ came on earth to 
begin. It has just struck me forcibly that I 
couldn’t even have sold oil in China if missiona- 
ries had not first opened up the country before 
me, using oil in their own homes until the Chinese 
wanted some for themselves. I might add that 
I know the Chinese language and admire the 
Chinese thoroughly as a patient people, reliable, 
friendly, Bee ous: and fine. Let me know if 
you can use me.’ 

Let him know! Cablegrams are expensive, but 
that Mission Board was only too delighted to 
cable: “ Yes. City of Clouds.” For they had 
been trying for years to start work for boys in 
that walled city; and here was the very man to 
build their school and teach it. 

Therefore the China Shepherd and the China 
Shepherdess started at once to build, both the 
school and also a little home of their own next 
door. Buffalo Bill deserted Two Horns and 
simply haunted the premises. He saw himself 


[ 319 ] 


A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 


enrolled as the first scholar! But he was worried 
over something: “ You must keep the workmen 
happy or they will work a magic,” he warned 
Cynthia. 

“Nonsense!” she said loftily. It was really 
appalling to him how careless she was about safe- 
guarding herself. Not only in the matter of 
violets picked at sunset-time, but also in other 
matters even more risky. It was a relief to him 
that she had at last become a Walk Behind; for 
men of course had more sense. He hurried to 
warn the China Shepherd: “If you don’t treat 
the workmen well they can destroy you, and your 
Honorable Inside Person as well.” 

“ How’s that, my boy? ” 

Buffalo Bill whispered in a ghostly fashion: 
“The minute you pay them off they will secretly 
draw the picture of a huge tiger on the inside of 
the devil screen before your front door. Well, in 
you walk, you and your Walk Behind; Zip! out 
will jump that tiger and gobble you both up!” 

The China Shepherd tried not to laugh. “I 
shall be careful to treat the workmen well,” he 
said. 

Buffalo Bill heaved a sigh of relief. What a 
satisfaction it was to talk things over as man to 


[ 320 ] 


ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 


man. He beamed broadly, showing what Cyn- 
thia called his ‘‘ 19-tooth-smile.” ‘“ Then I have 
no doubt that the workmen will work a charm 
for you! Probably they will bury two cold 
chisels in your courtyard, one on each side of the 
front door. It’s a splendid charm, because at 
dusk the chisels change into two horrible black- 
faced genii who will guard your door through all 
the night.” 

At this further display of superstition the new 
missionary pulled Buffalo Bill to a seat on a pile 
of lumber beside him. It was a five-jackets-cold 
day and the little fellow looked like a smoking 
chimney in the freezing air. “ Now look here, 
boy, there isn’t a cold chisel in all China that 
could save me or a chalk tiger that could hurt 
me. If you intend to come to my school you'll 
have to learn that Jesus Christ alone is a boy’s 
best friend.” 

“ Yes, sir,” agreed Buffalo Bill as man to man. 
Not that he believed in the statement, but it was 
an immense satisfaction to have a man on the 
premises. Indeed, I think it was a great satisfac- 
tion to the China Shepherdess, too, as well as to 
her little Boughten Baby. 

On the day when they moved into their little 


[ 321 ] 





A CHINA SHEPHERDESS 





new house beside the school, Cynthia stood a long 
while looking out of the gateway along the 
crooked narrow street with its crooked gloomy 
houses. There were pedlers walking past, and 
beggars, and barbers, and chair-bearers, old 
women being trundled in wheelbarrows, rich 
women hidden inside sedan-chairs, poor women 
hobbling past on foot—an endless procession— 
always more pedlers, and beggars, and bar- 
bers, and chair-bearers, wheelbarrows and sedan- 
chairs, old persons, and little children, the un- 
ceasing stream of China’s millions. 

With a very special look on her face she went 
indoors and hung on the wall this little framed 
verse by Daniel Henderson; then, with the 
Boughten Baby in her arms, she and the China 
Shepherd read it aloud together, in the dusk: 


HyMNn For A HOUSEHOLD 


Lord Christ, beneath Thy starry dome 
We light this flickering lamp of home, 
And where bewildering shadows throng 
Uplift our prayer and evensong. 

Dost Thou, with heaven in Thy ken, 
Seek still a dwelling-place with men, 
Wandering the world in ceaseless quest ? 
O Man of Nazareth, be our guest! 


[ 322 ] 





ENTER THE CHINA SHEPHERD 


Lord Christ, the bird his nest has found, 
The fox is sheltered in his ground, 
But dost Thou still this dark earth tread 
And have no place to lay Thy head? 
Shepherd of mortals, here behold 

A little flock, a wayside fold 

That wait Thy presence to be blest— 
O Man of Nazareth, be our guest! 


THE END. 


[ 323 ] 


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